Redecorated in red
by CV3
Summary: In 4x2, there is a throw away mention by Bobby of hunter pair Carl Bates and RC Adams. We know what happened to them, but as I like the whole hunter culture in this series, I thought I'd write them a story before the witnesses finished them off, redecorating their place in red. References 2x1. Slight language involved.
1. Chapter 1 : Long Beach California

_**CHAPTER 1 : Long Beach, California :**_

It was 9:26am. Carl Bates pushed through the heavy glass doors of Long Beach local police department, deep in thought. His mind was swimming with information, cross hatched with pictures - both the dry photographic evidence he had just seen, and the more colourful images it brought to mind from his own brand of research. He squinted in the seemingly perpetual sun of northern California, and tried not to look up at the face of the police department building behind him. The looming column of blue glass was giving him a headache.

In the parking lot, his business partner - in more ways than one - was predictably waiting for him, leaning up against the side of his beat up old Lincoln. He was staring at the shops that bordered the opposite side of the street, but obviously unseeingly. Carl slowed his steps, head tilted in consideration at his companion. It was times like this, when he wasn't aware he was being watched (an unguarded moment, sang _The Church _in his head) that the younger man was at his most deceptively complex. His face was clear and empty and he looked somehow fresh, his body open, hands idly resting against the surface of the sun-warmed metal at his back, his chin tilted up to the sun, eyes distant. For that split second, he looked achingly young and almost beautiful. Gone were the constant affectations of manner and whatever he used to justify them. The staples were still glaringly in place like neon signs - he was thirty-six, lean and rangy, dressed in faded jeans with holes in the knees, those ridiculous cowboy boots he always wore poking out from beneath jagged hems, the red splash of his large Jack Daniels belt buckle, the black t-shirt proclaiming _Black Sabbath _under a red and black checkered flannel. His shaggy blond hair was perpetually untidy, left to tousle like soft straw at will around his head. The only sensible thing about his attire was the leather throngs threaded with small (but useful) amulets that hung around his neck. Despite it all, however, the rare times Carl caught him unawares like this, he wondered intensely just who R.C Adams really was, underneath all the bullshit. It was like watching the man sleep wide awake. Despite the eight years the pair had worked together, at times like this, he wondered. Wondered even more why he never knew _this _guy. The man behind the mask.

His boot scuffed the loose road base of a forming pot hole, and R.C's attention snapped around to focus on him. _R.C _snapped back in to animate his regard, bullshit and all, that_ something _shifting back into the pale blue eyes and his body wired to alert, the mocking half-smile twisting one side of his mouth, the cocky, smart-ass provocation with which he held his body all slipping back into place_. _Carl sighed. After eight years, he didn't even know if the man's mother had named him R.C, or if the initials originally stood for something, and he had just decided it sounded more badass that way and it stuck. Mainly because he didn't go looking - his friend would certainly not have appreciated the enquiry. No, there was a reason for R.C's bullshit, whatever it was, and Carl granted him that. Maybe it was because he was too faded nowadays to do anything else. Los Angeles was spreading him thin in ways it hadn't when he was younger, and he wondered aimlessly if R.C ever hungered for the smooth oiled synchronicity of his childhood home in Baton Rouge, where warm rain dripped from hanging mosses on the trees of the bayou. He had been tired of the city for a long time. Time enough to move on, he thought to himself when he customarily thought too much - over somewhere where they had animals that actually tore people up instead of monsters. Montana, maybe.

R.C spread his hands in enquiry as Carl approached the Lincoln.

"So?"

"Well it's something," Carl hedged.

"Somethin' like our kind of somethin'?"

That was another thing about R.C that seemed to coalesce with his current tangent of contemplation, Carl thought as he slid the younger man a glance. That ridiculous southern accent stuck like tar, no matter how long R.C lived on the west coast. Cynically, Carl suspected it was just another element of _R.C Live_, the deliberately scripted and costumed show that aired on constant repeat every hour the man was awake. He shifted his shoulders - something about this was making him annoyed and edgy.

"Yeah maybe," he replied, wrestling his unease into the back of his head and handing R.C a Xerox, lifting the handle of the Lincoln behind him. The younger man's pale blue eyes scanned the photocopy of a young woman, mid twenties probably, virtually eviscerated by what looked very much like claws.

"Any weird shit at the scene?" he asked, spinning to pursue Carl into the tinted interior of the Lincoln. "What'd Hughes give you?"

"Not much, he's clamming up. Probably worried about a shitstorm of litigation if he goes on anyone's record saying anything about anything. Get in the car, will you?"

"What's up your ass?" enquired R.C predictably, and Carl sighed, having anticipated something similar.

"I don't know, there's something nagging at me about it, like maybe I seen this before and it never turned out well."

R.C arched an eyebrow, draping one arm languidly over the open door of the Lincoln and grating further on Carl's nerves. He waved the gruesome photocopy to expound his words.

"Hey, we'll look into it, right? Dot and tick, and rack the shotguns if we have to. End of story. Or - " he slid Carl a sharp, mostly deliberately affectatious look. "Are you calling in others on this one?"

Carl wouldn't bite. He was too tired. "We'll see. Who knows."

He slammed the door of the Lincoln before R.C could do anything but arch both brows to disappear under the mop of tousled blond and slide in a loose and suspiciously self-satisfied way toward the driver's seat.

The office did nothing to ease Carl's sense of despondency. The little premise was cluttered and untidy, much like his business partner, and paperwork was currently everywhere. R.C had taken the truck, and _had _emptied out the chemical cache in the bed - to drop it on the floor in the office. Carl stopped and looked down at it at his feet, while R.C loped into the room and flung himself into the chair behind the single desk, stabbing a finger at the answering machine. A congested detective running customarily on empty, his voice a monotone, requested their services for a clean up, at this address, anytime after four. Carl pinched his eyes shut - the headache was beginning to saw away at the back of his optic nerves. R.C picked up a rubber band and flicked it triumphantly at the opposite wall, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

"See? Now we'll get in on the all the details man, it's the same job as the copy. Fuck Hughes, if it's our kind of gig, then we'll see everything we need to see cleaning up the crap."

Carl nodded, nudging the chemical cache with his foot. R.C narrowed his eyes.

"Don't start in on me, I ain't your boy."

Carl suddenly felt too hollow to argue with him. What _was _up his ass about this job? Maybe it was unrelated. His head hurt. He looked at his watch - 10:03.

"I'll meet you back here around half three then," he said tonelessly. "We'll swing around, see what there is to see. And R.C," he paused and turned back to level the younger man with his eyes, hand on the knob of the office door, to watch him flick another rubber band at the complimentary calender of Tyson and Sons auto repair, Venice Beach, his feet crossed on the cluttered desk, "don't be getting anyone else in on this. I don't want to be tripping over yahoo hunters trying to clean up a crime scene, okay?"

R.C held up his hands in mock surrender, a decidedly sardonic smile twisting the corner of his mouth into a mean hairpin. "You got it, boss."

Carl let it slide.


	2. Chapter 2 : Someone and something

CHAPTER 2 : Someone and something :

In front of him, R.C was crouched on his haunches, blue forensic covers like upside down shower caps over his stupid boots, latex gloves covering his hands and feeding up into the disposable guards that covered from wrist to elbow. He rested his elbows on his knees, hands hanging between them, and stared at the floor. Carl stood behind him and looked around.

All around the pair, the fourth floor apartment was splattered with blood, like a blender job with the cap taken off. In front of where R.C crouched was obviously the place where the body had come to rest and soaked blood into the carpet, apparently enough of it to make its way through the insulation and into the apartment below. Hell of a thing, Carl thought. To be innocently eating wheaties one minute, showered in blood from your roof the next.

Around the room, there was what the cop at the door called "signs of struggle," and Carl was beginning to redisignate "evidence of monster lunch." The body had been slashed to the spinal cord by something long and razor sharp - knives, of course the local PD had said - but that couldn't account for the missing parts. The heart, liver and surrounding viscera were missing entirely from the picture the police found thanks to one iron-showered downstairs neighbour.

"I know what you're thinking," R.C claimed from his crouch at Carl's feet. "But it just ain't. The cycle's not right. Not when I'm blind as a bat just taking the garbage out. No moon out tonight, brother."

"You never know what I'm thinking," Carl argued, but it was a blatant lie and they both knew it. R.C grinned up at him and duck-walked further into the mess.

"There - see that scatter? Something was feeding sure, but something else was standing right there. If this was wolf chow, then they would have been too."

Damn it, Carl thought. He's right.

"And there," R.C stood up to face Carl, moving to stand in the middle of the room, his hands spread. "It stood here, then -"

He shook his head like a dog worrying meat, and Carl followed the extensions of the motion painted in liberal ribbons of dried blood across the floor and coffee table. Right again. His uneasiness was only growing.

"Look around for prints," he said, trying to push it down.

R.C shook his head. "If there were prints, it'd have been in the report."

Carl snorted. "Yeah, sure lackeys like us are given the whole low down."

"Like I haven't read it anyway," R.C shot back.

Carl lifted his head from the blood at his feet to track his partner with his eyes, as R.C sidestepped the dark slash of the victim's cold lifeblood congealed in the carpet and tiptoed towards the window.

"You didn't - you hacked the -?"

R.C tilted him his trademark sardonic half-grin from the window, a calculated move meant to communicate cockiness rather than humour.

"Don't ask, don't tell, man," he quoted.

Carl shrugged out his shoulders and dug in the satchel across his chest, looking for a blacklight. R.C ran his fingers along the sill, no doubt looking for residual sulphur, then unlatched the catch experimentally.

There was nothing untoward under the light's star-pale beam, and R.C found no demon trail. It was a long shot, anyways. Demons rarely animalistically eviscerated their victims with claws. The only reason the cops were calling this a homicide was because it took place in a fourth floor apartment in Long Beach. He thought again of Montana with dark wistfulness. There, it might have been chalked up to animal attack.

"Okay," R.C snagged his attention from the middle of the room. The younger hunter was looking around with down-to-business written all over him.

"No demon, no witch, no werewolf, no shifter. And, you know, no animals or nothin'."

He blew out a breath through his nose, perching his hands on narrow hips.

"Tell me we're sure this ain't just some grade-A whackjob slicin' and dicin' with a machete."

He crossed one arm loosely in front of his chest, slashing an invisible machete back and forth with the other like a skinny white Bruce Lee.

Carl crossed the room to the window.

"This was latched, alarm was still on, no forced entry to the place. But you already knew that. Cop said that she let her attacker in because that's the only option that makes any sense to them. I doubt she let in something capable of doing this. Yeah, I'm going with some_thing_ rather than some_one_."

"Maybe a cocktail of both," replied R.C, moving to stand again in front of the spread bloodstain by the door. "Whatever stood here and watched the show might have been a someone."

Carl looked at the spot on the floor, uneasiness again crawling up his back.

"Someone," he said softly. "Someone stood there and watched some monster tear that woman to shreds and eat her organs. Why?"

R.C shrugged. "Why do people snort crack and fuck hookers, or crochet and join bridge clubs? Why does anyone do anything?" He pinned an uncomfortable Carl with his pale eyes. "So, apart from the all-knowing oracle of Occam's Razor in supernatural reverse, got anything else to back up your monster lunch theory, old man?"

Carl shifted his gaze from contemplation of the bloodstained carpet to favour a quizzical regard of his partner. R.C was standing again with his hands perched on his hips, fully facing Carl, his expression twisted into that characteristic mixture of smart-arse cockiness and confrontational meanness. He was deliberately trying to provoke Carl and not being very subtle about hiding it - at least, not from a man who knew him as well as Carl did, despite the show. You didn't work with a guy in jobs like theirs for eight years without gaining some insight into his nature, genuine and contrived. The truth was he was uneasy too, and expressing it in a vintage R.C sort of clusterfucked way. Carl looked up at him and felt his expression soften, which in turn provoked R.C to scowl in confused discomfort and flick his eyes around the room nervously.

"Why don't you go right ahead and find me some unequivocal hard evidence to back up my unmatched gut instincts, if it's that important to you, Dick Tracy," he suggested, his voice warm with amusement.

R.C snorted and turned away, but proceeded to strip down the room for supernatural clues nonetheless, while Carl smiled at his back.

"So, in your covert view of the police reports, got any red flags?"

"You saw the picture," R.C returned, crouching down on the linoleum of the kitchen floor to unpack the chemical cleaners of their day job. "Body slashed to the bone, they suspected knives, but there was no trace elements in the wounds. Heart and liver missing, along with surrounding guts and shit."

Carl flicked him a look, idly and utterly pointlessly wondering why R.C often spoke in such a way as to deliberately downplay his intelligence.

"Organs never found. So something ate them, according to your theory. No one heard or saw anything, but that's not so much of a stretch. You were right about the lockup - doors and windows were found locked, alarm on." He tilted his head at the ceiling. "There's the vents - no one mentioned those. That all sounds good for a hunt, yeah. But there's one hole. If something human stood here and watched a rabid monster eat some chick, how'd they get out alive?"

Carl frowned. "I'll see your question and raise you another - how did a _monster_ get out of a locked apartment on its own, if it had no help doing it? Something that tears a woman apart and eats her - that's cold, animal behaviour. Doesn't exactly strike me as the sort of customer likely to lock up and leave the keys under the mat."

R.C flicked his eyes to the point in the carpet where their mystery human may have stood, and Carl could see the reflection of his own unease. Monsters - sure. Ghosts, spirits, demons, shifters, tulpas, witches, vampires, black dogs, hellhounds and everything in-between, both he and R.C wouldn't flinch arming up with whatever weapon would take it out and lose no sleep over doing so. But humans - humans scared him, and though R.C would never drop the bullshit long enough to admit it, he knew the younger hunter felt the same.

"It's like gangsters matching pitbulls," he muttered.

It was an apt enough analogy. Carl gestured to the mess surrounding them.

"Get anything else from this?"

R.C shook his head, both in negation and to clear it of his thoughts, Carl suspected.

"Nah, lets get on with it."

The machine flashed two messages when Carl returned wearily to the office. It wasn't far from his apartment, and he wasn't quite sure why he had detoured to the business instead of just going home with R.C. As if seeing the guy at work every job they got wasn't enough, he was also his next-door neighbour. For Carl's part, he had regarded the arrangement with a contradictory sort of love/hate. He wouldn't deny to himself that he wanted R.C close enough to keep an eye on him - they both knew what was out there in the dark, had hunted it for eight years. Conversely, it knew them. He didn't want something following the younger hunter home one night without him having someone close to turn to. But the very idea of actually _living _with R.C aged him another eight years. No, they'd kill each other - or more likely, he'd kill R.C.

He stabbed the button. The first was from the detective who had passed them on the job, Jacobson. His congested monotone crackling in a tinny imitation through the cheap speaker made Carl think of paperwork, black coffee and unsated desperation. Just listening to it made him tired.

"Nice job on the cleanup, wasn't sure you guys'd even be in town. Payment's been made by the department on the flat rate. Give you a call if anything else comes up."

Carl nodded absently. It was a familiar police complaint voiced in Jacobson's exhausted passive-aggressive way - though Carl and R.C had some roots, unlike many other hunters who stuck to the road, didn't mean they didn't go where the hunt took them from that springboard. The crime-scene and forensic clean-up outfit they ran had often allowed them access to supernaturally-inclined activity, like the apartment that day, without the riskier need for fraud. Carl was getting too old for a young gunslinger's game, and despite R.C's habitual bullshit cover necessitating the need to rail at him for that, his innate intelligence won his acquiescence in the end. The second message beeped into life.

"It's Mackey. Heard about some slice up down tinsel town and thought you guys might be on it. If not, head's up. I'm passing though that way myself in a couple of days if you need a third wheel. Just call."

Carl smiled to himself. He had always liked Mackey. There was absolutely nothing in this job for him to stuff and mount, however, he thought with a snort of laughter. No, so far they had next to nothing to go on anyway - no doubt R.C would be devoting himself to rectifying that shortcoming, and Carl had meant what he said. Though he didn't consider Mackey a yahoo, he didn't want other hunters in on this. Or anything, generally speaking. There were a fair few he respected, that was no less than the truth - Mackey was a good man, despite a few interesting personality quirks. And of course Bobby Singer seemed to be a man in everyone's journal, and had helped he and R.C out more times than he could count. And there had been Harvelle, he thought with a familiar slow settling of sadness. Poor old Bill, before that hellspawn clawed him all up. Turner had been good to them, but he stepped back from the job, and Carl had never asked him why. There had been others, by reputation or brief encounters. He knew contacts of contacts were out there, some less reputable than others. He slouched back in the cheap plastic chair that served as RC's idea of interior design and pulled in a deep sigh. There had been Billy Brady of course, but Seth's death at the hands of a demon - must be ten years ago now - had broken him and left him burned out. Carl frowned to himself, his mind skittering uncharacteristically to RC. Though he and RC were by no means involved the way Billy and Seth were, and maybe it was the uneasiness this job was working up in him, but he couldn't help but wonder in that moment if there was inevitably something dark waiting for them on down the road - one hunt gone bad was all it would take. One misstep, one slow reload. They knew the score - hunters didn't live long. But what would happen if he lost RC? He thought of Turner's famous phrase - "we all got it coming." He shivered suddenly, surprising himself out of his morbid reverie. Hell, he was being exactly what RC always sneered he was - a superstitious old fool. He stood up, putting it all out of his mind for the night. No doubt, the younger hunter would be on the scent, and remind him of it all again all too soon.

RC strode into Carl's apartment neglecting to knock, slammed the thin door, ripped off his worn black leather jacket and whipped it savagely at his partner's patched lounge suite, before dropping his lean form heavily into the lay-z-boy and propping his cowboy boots on Carl's coffee table. Only then did he shift his gaze to stick on Carl himself, who was sitting on the opposing couch and watching him without interest.

"Have fun?" Carl asked, despite the fact he knew it would only provoke the younger man.

RC twisted his face into a complicated mixture of disgust, anger, sarcasm and something else too contorted for Carl to place and hung his arms over the sides of the chair.

"The least you could fucking do is get me a beer," he said.

Carl complied without argument, leaning his shoulder into the kitchen doorjamb, waiting on the rant, as RC twisted off the cap and drank deeply.

"You know, you'd think we were fucking cleaning ladies with this shit. Here I am up to my elbows in piss and vomit listening to meathead cops talk up the overwhelming heroics of domestic war stories, all so we can keep our precious cover intact while some monster is out there happily eviscerating women. And where the fuck were you, anyways?"

"I took a detour to talk to Hughes again -"

RC snorted. "I got more chance out-striking a sidewinder than gettin' anything worth it out of that meatsack."

"At least then those boots would be practical for something," Carl smirked, earning him RC's settling glower. He pushed on before the younger hunter could wind up.

"And as a matter of fact, he did give me something, and while you were busy protecting our cover I did some digging."

He tossed a thin manilla file into RC's lap. RC shot Carl a final dirty look, and opened the file.

"What is this, some chick? A victim?"

"Not a victim. Maybe a witness, maybe something … else."

RC looked up at him. "Eh?"

"Look at the addresses," Carl directed, tipping his chin. "So far there's been two women killed this way - inside, apartment secured, slashed and organs missing. The scene we cleaned up for Jacobson, and now another one last night. This woman was seen at both, it turns out."

RC's eyebrows disappeared under the chaotic mop of his hair. His quick fingers leafed through the paperwork, finally coming up with a blurred, bad quality image of a woman, small and slender, dark hair and nondescript grey attire. He squinted at it.

"Hughes got that from the parking lot security camera across the street from last night's victim's house. Time-stamped about four hours before she was found."

"So, what," RC questioned, the frustration not quite worked out of his system still shortening his fuse. "Vengeful spirit, death omen, woman in fucking grey?"

Sarcasm was heavy in his voice, and Carl automatically drew in a slow breath through his nose, tempering his own irritation. It was a tick RC could read like a headline, and it only made him angrier.

"I don't know, but it's something. This woman was the only common denominator Hughes could find, his only lead. Which in a cop's world, gets him nowhere. It could get _us_ further."

Carl's tone was measured, and he watched some of the fight suddenly drain out of RC. He took a pull from the bottle.

"Okay, Sherlock. So what now?"

"Without much more to go on, I'd say we need in on last night's crime scene."

"Doubt that'll get us much further," RC grumbled.

"You don't know that, and we have nothing else," Carl ground out, his temper rising just as his companion's cooled.

"So, what. Call Jacobson and ask to take on the job?" He was only half joking.

Carl sighed. "It may look suspicious, but unless he calls us, I don't see -"

His voice was cut short by the loud trilling of the phone. RC visibly startled, covering the reaction in defence against Carl's grin by complaining mulishly about Carl being a damn deaf old man. Carl picked up the phone, answered affirmatively with something RC couldn't catch, and took short notes. When he hung up, he was grinning.


	3. Chapter 3 : Woman in grey

"I can't believe that just fucking happened," RC said for at least the fiftieth time.

It was 1am, and he was sitting forward in the driver's seat of the pair's truck, gripping the steering wheel, eyes wide.

"Well, it did," reiterated Carl uselessly. He pulled an old pair of reading glasses off his nose - their presence a sure sign of his fatigue - and closed the fast-building file.

"You said that, and he full-on called us. I ain't ever had that shit happen before."

"The coincidence is breathtaking," Carl drawled. "Can you get over it long enough to, I don't know, work the job, maybe?"

"Yeah, yeah sure," RC replied, eyes wide, obviously wired.

Carl shook his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"So, she was there again. And _that _isn't coincidence. Somehow, she's wrapped up in this."

"Yeah, okay. So she could be a death omen and nothing more. That scene - that wasn't no spirit, Carl. Unless she's some kind of monster that turns on cue _after _it poses for the security cameras, then she ain't eating these vics. I honest to God can't think of what else she could be."

Carl thought back to the first crime scene, the little patches of clean carpet that just marked out the vague impression of a pair of small human feet amid all the blood. Human. That was what had chilled him, and despite his denial had doubled for RC, initially. That's what he was avoiding. Carl put his foot in it.

"Maybe she's not anything. Maybe she's human. Maybe she's controlling this thing. Setting it on these women to tear them apart."

RC was silent, and Carl knew he'd hit a nerve, despite his sympathy for his friend. It was always so much easier to think of all the evil things out there in the night as _things, _not people. To think that the little woman on the security footage, always too low quality to unequivocally identify, was a flesh and blood human woman capable of setting some monster capable of tearing out the organs of the dead women on them was the sort of thing that kept him up at night. Carl was a hunter - he hadn't lived an easy life. Even before he and RC had the supernatural world shoved down their throats, he'd known some evil sons of bitches who were human through and through. He'd had grassroots human guys shove a knife in his guts and leave him in a parking lot, seen a gang of four brawlers swamp an unarmed, alone and heavily inebriated RC. He wasn't naïve - he knew humans were capable of true evil without the aid of demons and monsters. Just, funny enough, he'd got used to the sorts of crimes committed by evil things lately, rather than evil people. Which was ironic, given his day job. Maybe he'd just got better at cleaning up the blood and not thinking about how it got there. He thought of Jacobson and his dull, perpetual exhaustion, or Hughes and the desperation that simmered just below the exterior. Maybe he gave cops too little credit, dealing with the monstrously human.

"Yeah, okay," RC snapped Carl's attention away from his thoughts. He sounded anything but. "Yeah. So, if she is setting this - this thing - on these chicks, hell man that ain't our gig. Maybe Hughes will actually come in useful for a change. He does his cop thing and figures out who this girl is, what her fucked up motive for all this is, he tells us, we pay her a visit and butcher her pet. Sound like a plan?"

"It's the only one we've got," Carl replied dully. "We don't know who she is, what she wants, how to find her. I'll keep up my interest on the case with Hughes and see where it goes. He's going to be feeling the pressure and wanting to see results on this - it's going to keep happening. She's not done."

The obnoxious hammering on his door could only have been RC. That and Carl was sure he'd heard the hammering bounce all the way along the dividing wall before it reached crescendo on the front door. It was after eight, but they'd had a late night. Carl shuffled to the door in lounge pants and a t-shirt, to squint at RC, who obviously had not been to bed.

"I cleaned up the image," he said. "And broke a few hundred computer and privacy laws. This came through the DMV. We're going to Culver City."

He slapped a piece of paper into Carl's chest, turned and disappeared. Carl didn't even have time to ask whether or not RC had shared this with the intrepid detective, nor did he really have to. He doubted RC wanted Hughes in on this yet, asking questions and making arrests, when they needed information on the monster first. Besides, how exactly RC had come by the information was likely not something Hughes could overlook. Carl peeled the printout from his chest and all his weariness disappeared at the face of 29-year-old Carrie Dobson from Culver City, California, who stared up at him from the DMV printout without any trace of malice. Her slim, pale face and cloud of dark hair was easily recognizable from the blurred security image he had recovered from Hughes. Her large blue eyes looked up at him guilelessly, like any young woman he might have encountered at a diner or a service desk, like any young mother or wife. He imagined her standing in the middle of the fourth floor apartment, watching while at her feet, some dark shape of a monster tore another young woman to pieces. He was liking this job less and less the more information they got on the case, legal or otherwise. He shut the door.

"That's the address." RC nodded to the small, soap-yellow brick-veneer house that squatted on the corner of the quiet suburban street.

Carl stared and said nothing. He was still uneasy about this, despite the fact that apparently, RC's bloodhound qualities had eclipsed both his caution and his unease. Carl wished he could squash the uncomfortable feeling inside that this wasn't right, the disgust he felt that a young woman could be setting this thing on others like her. Maybe he was getting too old for this.

"Doesn't exactly look like a den of evil, eh," RC grinned over at him. "But hey, night brings out the crazy. I say we go get something to eat and come back after sundown."

Carl nodded. He had nothing to say.

"There."

"What?"  
"There, far sidewalk. That's her." RC nodded to the slim woman who had just stepped onto the opposing sidewalk. She certainly matched Hughes' parking lot mystery woman in appearance - the mid-thirties guy at her side, however, didn't. The two watched in silence from the shadow of the truck as the small woman slipped her arm through her companion's, her face cheerful as she talked.

Carl jerked a look askance at RC. "So she's what, selling ringside tickets now?"

"I suppose we'll find out," RC replied. "They're driving in."

RC pulled the truck into the road behind the small red hatchback of nondescript make the couple had just disappeared into.

"You sure that was her?" Carl asked.

RC opted to move his partner's line on questioning along, rather than answer.

"I don't know what the deal with the dude is, but she's headin' for East LA. He could be anyone - accomplice, next victim, who the fuck knows." He snorted. "East side. Just what this job needs, whores and crack heads. You want to run the risk of not following her?"

That sobered Carl - and shut him up, for the moment.

The red bubble was indeed moving toward the East side, RC keeping the truck a discreet distance behind in traffic.

"Hope you bought those old man glasses," RC smirked as the red hatchback nosed into the right lane. Carl didn't bother with a response, simply kept his eyes on the car as RC eased the truck to follow. Any way he looked at it, this wasn't good. It wasn't as if the East side was famous for its restaurants catering to young professional couples. Where was this woman going, and who was the man at her side? The hatchback eventually pulled to the kerb just as Carl was about to caution RC to back off - there was less traffic to blend into away from the highway, and he was less than enthusiastic to get made by a woman who apparently set a rabid organ-devouring monster on people.

The woman in question got out, pulling a hood up over her dark hair. Her companion followed, standing on the sidewalk with his hands pushed into the pockets of his light jacket. He looked around, obviously confused, and asked something of the woman that Carl couldn't make out. She replied, gesturing to the squat apartment building ahead of them, the lower garage doors heavily graffitied. The young man seemed to hesitate, apparently less than impressed with his surroundings, but he followed her across the street nonetheless, and the two disappeared into the badly lit ground floor hall.

"The hell?" RC voiced Carl's interior query. "We're going to have to follow them, aren't we."

"This was your idea," Carl replied before he could stop himself, regressing forty years in four words.

RC grunted and swung his lean form out of the truck. Carl followed more cautiously, casting a cursory glance around the street. He had no desire to be mugged and stabbed, either. To be exact, he had no interest in humans and was not at all enjoying this job right now.

RC jogged across the street at the bumper of a beat up GMC van, and Carl followed to the dimly lit foyer.

"We're gonna have no idea which apartment," RC whispered. "Fuck, why do I feel like a rookie?"

Carl couldn't help but agree with him - which didn't mean he'd agree out loud.

"You know our luck. Maybe we won't have to. You got an EMF?"

RC shot him a surprised look in the glow of the hall's single bulb, backlighting his shaggy blonde hair into a jagged halo.

"I thought we already went down this road? Monster, not spirit?"

"You never know. EMF?"

RC jabbed a thumb at the truck, and Carl went back to retrieve the meter as RC slipped inside and took the stairs.

As their luck would have it, Carl found RC peering around the corner of the second floor hall, at the woman standing at a door half way down, knocking.

"The boyfriend?" Carl whispered at his elbow.

"She told him to wait by the elevator, end of the hall," RC replied, his eyes glued to the lone woman. Before Carl could ask any more questions, the door opened and a black man somewhere in his forties, dressed in a white singlet under a loose button-up shirt, stuck his head out. The woman broke into a hesitant smile, saying something neither hunter could catch with her hood obscuring much of her face. The man frowned, looking confused and more than a little suspicious, but he eventually let her in. the door closed, and RC tilted his face toward Carl, with a silently mouthed _what the?_

Carl had no insights for him. A moment later, the woman re-emerged, heading down the hall to the elevator. Her pace was quicker this time, and she cast a last look around the empty, dingy hall, causing the two hunters in the cover of the corner wall to duck back out of sight.

A moment again, and she was back, the man at her side. She was talking, fast and high-pitched, but the tone suggested chatter rather than panic.

"Just come in for a second, then we can all go together," she said clearly, brushing her hand down the man's arm to catch on his hand, drawing him inside.

"It's a shitty neighbourhood, we shouldn't even be out here. Who do you know on the East side, anyway?" He complained.

The woman dramatically rolled her eyes.

"Come on, you girl, its not going to kill you. And don't be rude to them about the neighbourhood either, okay? Be nice."

That seemed to pacify him somewhat, but he still looked suspicious and uncomfortable.

A second more, and they both disappeared into the apartment, the door snicking closed behind them.

"Great, now what?" RC asked. "Sit here with our junk in our hands while they're doing God knows what in there?"

"Fire escape?" suggested Carl desperately.

"Really?" RC snarled, a mixture of sarcasm and incredulity.

Carl had opened his mouth to suggest RC was more than welcome to come up with a better idea, when there was a muffled noise inside, and sudden heavy steps that had not been there before. Something heavy and dense, like a body hitting the floor.

"Shit," RC hissed. "Shit shit shit."

He pulled the old Beretta 92FS from the back of his belt and checked the silver clip before slithering into the hall.

"Hold up," Carl whispered, but he had no choice but to back the younger hunter's play.

RC flattened himself on the wall beside the door like something out of a bad cop movie, and carefully tested the handle. It, unsurprisingly, was locked. Not that it was so unusual to lock your doors in these parts, but right before you all presumably went out for dinner? Less likely. Carl licked his lips and focused on the door, for any noise behind it. It was silent a moment, before he heard something that set all the hair on his body on end - a low, staccato growling, like something exerting energy and liking it.

"Fuck it," RC said, and threw his shoulder against the door. Before Carl could think, his partner had rolled into the room, the Beretta at his eyeline, and slid around to cover himself with the wall to his left. Carl followed, his old 58 drawn, and kicked the door shut behind him.

The woman from the security video looked up at them from her position in the middle of the room, eyes wide. But it was for the second pair of eyes that fixed on them the hunters held most concern. They were large, black, and set in a horribly wide-stretched head of greyish transparent skin, a small curled ear on each side. The body tapered down a short neck to powerful shoulders of the same description, followed by long powerful arms tipped in five long black claws.

The claws were currently embedded in the abdomen of the man that had answered the door. A telephone, old style and black, lay next to his head and there was blood all over his face. No sign of the reluctant boyfriend.

The thing - whatever it was - focused on the hunters and opened a wide, round mouth of sharp tapered fangs to hiss at them. The rapport of RC's Beretta stung his ears, and the thing gave a rasping shriek, drawing back as the silver smashed into the translucent grey flesh.

"No stop!" the woman screamed, moving as if to stop them herself, but coming up short with the mixture of guns and monsters. The thing rolled, righted, and barrelled toward RC in a loping gallop with another crazed yowl. The hunter responded by emptying the clip anywhere near the lumbering shape he could, crazily standing his ground. Carl flung his silver knife at its retreating back, catching it above the shoulder just as it crushed RC into the wall. The hunter went down, but the distraction was good, and the thing rounded on Carl, who edged to the right. It shrieked, fathomless eyes on him, and lumbered toward him, gaining speed. It was an old man's trick - Carl dropped just as the thing leapt for him - and it flung itself clean out the window. The sound of splintering glass assaulted his ears, and he faintly heard the impact of the unnatural body introduce itself to the pavement below.

"No! No no!" the woman yelled, frightened eyes on Carl, but before he could make a grab for her after the sudden disappearance of the thing, she dashed for the door and disappeared down the hall. For his part, Carl let her go. They knew who she was and where she lived - they knew they had been right, and she was manipulating this situation knowingly all along. It was a matter of recon. Instead, he sidestepped the body to where RC still slumped against the wall, coughing and cursing.

"You okay?" he asked.

The younger man nodded, incrementally getting his breath back.

"Man, I am way too pretty to have my face ripped off by a monster."

Carl snorted a laugh. "Yeah, and I'm way too old for any of this. Come on, we better make ourselves scarce. Thanks to us, this isn't exactly a nice quiet job in a locked and secured apartment. Someone'd have called the cops."

He grasped RC's hand and hauled the younger man to his feet.

"Nice job letting psycho chick make a run for it," RC groused as he sloped into Carl's apartment with a wince.

It hadn't taken long to drive back to Long Beach, and RC hadn't had much to say for himself, having just been sandwiched between a wall and a monster.

"Doesn't matter," Carl replied dimly, swinging the door shut behind him. "We know who she is, where she lives, what she's up to. Besides, I didn't think manhandling a screaming woman out of an apartment where a monster had just killed and half eaten someone was a great idea, even on the East side."

RC started to laugh at that, only to bite it off in a grunt of pain and brace his ribs with one hand.

Carl gestured at him vaguely. "You sure nothing's snapped?"

RC nodded, easing himself down into Carl's lay-z-boy gingerly nonetheless.

"She could just disappear," he argued.

Carl shook his head, casting an incredulous look at RC.

"You have any idea how hard that actually is to do?" when RC gave no more answer than a grimace for his ribs, Carl circled him to the couch and sat slowly. "Besides, normal people don't just disappear overnight. They wouldn't even know how. No, she'll stick to what she knows, its how we're hardwired."

"So you're classifying a woman who watches monsters eat people for fun as normal, now?"

"I'm beginning to, yeah."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

"What happened to the boyfriend?"

"_What?" _

"The boyfriend. He makes sense of all of this."

"How is this - or you - in any way making sense?"

"Think about it. She went in there with that guy, acting like they were there to meet friends and go out or something, but he didn't seem to know what was going on. They were obviously close, right? A couple, or family. Then we bust in and there's a monster and no boyfriend."

"You don't think -"

Carl nodded grimly.

RC leant forward in the lay-z-boy, propping his elbows on his knees.

"You think - _him? _But then what…"

Carl watched as RC began to catch his drift, obviously not enjoying it. When he spoke, his voice was soft and uncharacteristically uncertain with some shade Carl couldn't name.

"So … he has no idea he was changing. She was managing the whole thing. Managing him." A frown creased the space between RC's pale eyes, and his voice abruptly returned to the quick, sardonic snap he was used to, giving Carl no time to muse on the momentary softness. "So, what. Say this guy gets himself turned - bitten or something werewolf style, and had no idea he was turning into that thing. But she knows exactly what's going on, and what - she's using him? Setting him on people she wants dead? Trying to cope with her boyfriend the amazing morphing monster?"

Carl nodded. He'd hated this job from the start - he remembered RC asking what was up his ass. It was only getting worse, and he couldn't seem to shake the sick feeling it gave him.

"That's how it looks. She's been picking his victims, leaving the crime scenes in such a way as to be unexplainable. Taking care of everything. Doing the only thing she could think of."

"But how the hell do you get to that decision? Who the hell are these people to her, anyway? You'd think she'd just set him loose on the street, cops could chalk it up to a good old fashioned random act of violence. Why create all this interest? Why the cloak and dagger?"

"She's trying to protect him," Carl said heavily. "If she just turned him out, anything could happen to him. Maybe he'd be caught, as a man or a monster, he'd either be killed, arrested for murder or spend the rest of his life as a lab rat. Besides, what's to say he wouldn't eat a busload of kids, or some old lady taking out her garbage? Get hit by a truck? Never come back? This way, she can control him. Watch him. Give him one victim, indoors without exposure, make sure he changed back, clean up. Lie to him."

RC was staring at Carl's boots, and the older hunter could see his sadness was contagious.

"So … so what now?" RC asked, sounding much younger than his thirty-six capable years.

Carl rolled his lips against his teeth, and drew a deep breath, for some reason right at that moment, hating himself for doing the right thing. "Now we do our damn job. This guy is a monster, whether he knows it or not. She may be running damage control, but the bottom line is he is out there eviscerating people. He has to be stopped."

"Yeah," RC agreed faintly, eyes distant. "Yeah."


	4. Chapter 4 : Day jobs

Three days later, the two hunters found themselves in their day job disguise, standing in the run-down apartment in East LA. Most of the cops had cleared out, giving way to contractors working to repair the shattered front window. Somehow, it was worse knowing exactly what had happened, what was going on and why - at least to a working theory. It depressed Carl, and he knew from his slow, subdued way of moving that it sapped RC's hunt instincts, leaving the younger man flat. He unpacked the chemical cleaners uncharacteristically without a word.

"Sorry about the mess," quipped a voice from Carl's shoulder, and he jumped in surprise. He was a hunter, and his senses were good, but somehow the soft-footed detective could always manage to sneak up on him. Hughes gave his customary smile - good humour underpinned with smothered desperation. He was in his mid-forties, of a middle build that spoke of not enough exercise and not enough food, with thinning brown hair and creased dark blue eyes. He always wore a slightly dishevelled suit, though Carl knew his compatriots gave him hell over it.

"Any idea what happened here?" Carl fished.

Hughes shrugged. "We were thinking maybe it's the same deal as the other two - but this one gets points for individuality. The others were quiet, no fuss like. This one literally blew out the front window. Plus the other two victims were female, now this guy. No obvious connection between victims. I don't know, I honestly don't."

Carl nodded, satisfied. It was in their best interest that the police were clueless right now - it gave he and RC some time to figure out the specifics of the boyfriend's transformation, what exactly he was, how to kill him. It settled over Carl with the heaviness of something that felt almost like regret, and he wasn't used to that feeling on a hunt.

"Body's been taken care of, obviously, but the organs weren't missing this time. That was another weird thing about this one. I dunno, might not even be the same thing. It is LA."

Carl nodded unenthusiastically. Only days ago he had been hounding Hughes for details of the cases, trying to put together his own hunt. Now, he had rather too many details. He thought of the grey, translucent, misshapen head, the black eyes. The EMF had been silent, hadn't it? But those eyes, they almost looked the way a demon did, looking out at him from human form. It had reacted to the silver, but in a way that was indeterminate. What was it, this monster? What had happened to the man it had once been, and in some part at least, still was. How were they to find out how to bring it down? There were many questions still unanswered, and they were unlikely to find those answers cleaning up the crime scene - which in part was their own - for Hughes and the LAPD. And then there was the woman - it was her, not the monster, which was bothering him, and had done from the start. Was he her boyfriend, as they expected? Her husband? Brother? What sort of person was she, to find out he had turned into a monster, and proceed to deliver him to his victims and get them both out of there, as controlled as she could? What were they going to do with her when they were busy killing him? Would they be killing the man, or the monster?

"Are you alright?" Hughes' voice intruded into his thoughts.

Carl shook himself - he realized that he had been vacantly watching RC pulling up the carpets while the reel of his thoughts spun in his head.

The man in question fixed Carl and Hughes with a sharp look at the detective's query, his expression tight and guarded.

"Yeah, of course. Why wouldn't I be?" replied Carl far too quickly.

Hughes was frowning at him with a mixture of concern and interest.

"I don't know, you just looked kind of … something, for a minute there."

Carl watched RC go back to the carpets, but he could tell by the rigidity of his movements that his partner's attention was entirely focused on him and Hughes.

"I'm fine," be assured, more easily. "We should be done with the job fairly quickly. Standard thing."

The detective frowned at him a moment longer, curiosity being a part of his natural job description, then appeared to dismiss it.

"Okay, Jacobson will get the cash wired. Thanks, guys."

Carl gratefully nodded him out of the room, and RC lifted blue eyes to widen at Carl in a way that clearly communicated that he thought the older hunter was chronically losing his cool.

Carl shook his head and took up his share of the day work, but he was still much more uneasy than he liked.

Carl put aside the latest, completely unhelpful, book just as RC slid into the apartment characteristically neglecting to knock. Even from the door, he looked tired.

Carl looked up. "Anything?"

RC shook his head and dropped into Carl's lay-z-boy despondently.

"You know what I don't get?" He began without preamble. "If this thing is some kind of werewolf cousin or something, then there'd be a cycle, right? Wolf out on the first three nights of the full moon or whatever. But there's been no pattern to this shit. It's half moon. And she obviously has to let him have at it, right? She can't lock him up or contain him, or you'd think she would have, rather than make herself accessory to murder. If this thing is a shifter - who the fuck ever heard of involuntary shape shifting? If he's a shifter, he'd know. From what we've seen, he doesn't have a clue." He sighed deeply and dragged a hand down his face. "What the blue fuck is going on here?"

It was a very good question, Carl reflected.

"I take it nothing happened last night," Carl guessed.

RC shook his head. "They stayed in all night at his place in central. Absolutely nothing whatsoever out of the ordinary. For eleven hours."

Carl winced, not envying his partner the vigil he himself was not looking forward to taking over that night. They'd been backed into a corner here - they still didn't know what was going on, and couldn't exactly question either of them, as one was apparently clueless anyway and the other would hardly cooperate with two hunters bent on ending her boyfriend. They'd resorted to one or both of them being on watch every night, as the attacks seemed to be connected to nightfall. They watched, they waited, they researched. They were getting nowhere.

RC tilted his chin at the growing stack of books on Carl's coffee table.

"You got anything?"

Carl shifted forward. "I've been thinking the same as you - likely something werewolf-related, or a shifter. But what if it's more complicated than that? What if it's a curse, a disease, something outside the box?"

"You think someone cursed this guy into turning into a butt ugly pitbull?" RC asked.

"It's at least possible," Carl defended himself. "Or maybe it's some kind of contaminate, maybe like a disease passed on from a monster."

"Supernatural rabies. Great."

Carl grimaced - yeah, it was weak, and he knew exactly what RC's next question would be, but he was just trying to think outside the obvious here. There was something about this situation that nagged at him, like they were missing something.

"You got anything to actually back this up?" RC asked as predicted.

"The only reference I could find to being cursed into turning into a monster are mythological to the point that not even I believe it. As for some kind of contaminate, there is only references to partial exposure - bitten by vampires without ingesting the blood, scratched by werewolves or bitten when they were in human form. Nothing that could infect someone into turning into - whatever this guy is."

"And unconscious shape shifting?"

Carl snorted, and RC nodded in agreement.

"We got any leads on how to bring this thing down?" he asked, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees, rubbing at tired eyes.

"It reacted to the silver. It's a safe bet for all things monster related usually. Keeping iron on hand wouldn't hurt, either. Otherwise, aside from decapitating it or chopping it into bits -"

He didn't have to voice the sentiment _we're screwed _for RC to get it. The younger man dropped one hand, to lean his face sideways against the open palm of the other. With his round blue eyes and crazy hair, the posture made him look almost comically owlish. Carl watched him curiously, for a moment another of those strange cracks in RC's habitual façade opening up.

"I need to get some sleep," he said dully. "It'd be easier if we just jumped this guy in human form and put a bullet in his back."

Carl couldn't help his transparent surprise.

"You'd do that?" He asked. "Kill an unknowing human, cold, like that? Before we're even sure what's going on here?"

RC lifted his head, mask back in place, and gave Carl a strangely cold look he didn't know what to do with.

"Hell, you and I both know this thing ain't human, not anymore. Just looks like one. And when it does, I'd lay my bet that it's vulnerable. Smaller, weaker. Thing's a monster wearing a human face, and I for one back taking full advantage of any weakness we can."

Carl frowned at him, half worried, half amused. It was hard to tell sometimes if RC really believed half the crap he came out with, or it was all part of Channel RC, keeping up his bullshit, playing the role he had created for himself. It was even harder at such times to tell if he was joking or not. True his partner affected a sardonic sense of humour, but he was also likely to say crazy things like that intending them seriously. The problem was, the mask fit so tight sometimes, Carl couldn't tell if the man underneath would honestly act on the threat, or believed it at all. Times like this, he cursed RC for being a thoroughly complicated man. He was tired too - too tired and uneasy with this whole hunt to try and decipher RC right now.

"You go, get a few hours. I'll keep it up with the research and … hope."

RC snorted a laugh and stood up without another word, heading next door to his bed.

Carl emulated him unconsciously, rubbing his face with his hands, his eyes settling back on the books, the details of what they knew running over in his head.

By the time late afternoon was threatening darkness, Carl had little more to go on than before. He could take precautions - arm up the truck's cache with all things usually monster repellent - silver, iron, stakes - and at least make sure the guy didn't eviscerate anyone else.

He remembered RC's words outside the East side apartment - _Fuck, why do I feel like a rookie? _For hunters with a few years and a lot of miles under their belts - yeah, this was making him feel the same way. Not much he could do about it.

He snatched up the truck's keys and headed out.


	5. Chapter 5 : Vigil

Half way to central his cell rang.

"Hot on the trail?" RC's voice dripped in sarcasm, the stubborn southern edge more noticeable when he was tired.

"Something I can do for you?" Carl matched him sardonically, not bothering to answer.

"I might have something - I called West."

Carl's temper, usually dormant especially these days, struck like a match. "_I told you -"_

"I didn't!" RC cut him off hastily, probably accurately anticipating Carl's response. "It was just an info call, purely hypothetical."

Carl snorted. "Yeah, I bet he believed that for the first two seconds."

West was definitely what he would consider a yahoo - but he certainly wasn't stupid.

"Look," Even bounced off satellites in space, RC's voice still managed to maintain its full quota of scorn. "He said he thought we were on the right track - werewolf cousin. Same principle - Id gone wild, man. Which is probably why little miss puppy education hasn't ended up monster chow. Like the Hulk - get mad, turn into a monster."

"You're suggesting a gamma bomb is responsible for this?" Carl asked dryly, sounding far too much like RC.

"I'm saying - wait, why do you know what happened to the Hulk?"

"This isn't helping!"

That earned him RC's slow chuckle, and Carl ground his teeth as the lights entering central slipped off the windshield.

"West said he hunted something in the Minnesota woods a couple of years ago that had been disappearing hikers from the area. Turned out, there was this ranger guy who worked the information centre at the last check point. Normal geek ninety percent of the time - until he started thinking with his dick, then it was gloves off. West said the same thing - no connection to moon phases and shit - just is. Genetic freak, triggered by some internal shift. One up for the health risks of repression."

"West happen to mention how he killed it?"

"That's just it - he shot it. Not with silver or iron or anything that makes sense - at least to us. He shot it. With a .45."

"That doesn't make any sense," Carl agreed with him. "You already shot it plenty of times."

"Yeah, with silver."

"So what? You shoot a man, or anything else for that matter, with silver in all the right places and it still dies."

"Just reporting the news. Maybe it's lead?"

"That's stupid."

"Got your piece on you?"

Carl didn't bother to answer that question. Neither of them had gone anywhere unarmed for ten years.

"Hey, all I'm saying is if you get up close and personal with this thing, give it a go."

Again, his partner's earlier words drawled through his head - _It'd be easier if we just jumped this guy in human form and put a bullet in his back. _

"Right, I'll be sure to test out your theory right before it opens my chest up."

"Only room for one smartass in this partnership, pal," RC warned, as usual mirroring Carl's thoughts, and hung up on him.

Carl drew a deep breath, and despite himself, checked the clip in his old S&W 58, shaking his head at the field day RC always had with the old revolver. Ironically, it was just the sort of stupid cowboy thing he expected from RC, but it had been his dad's gun before his, and hell, he was sentimental. He had never questioned RC's beat-up Berretta, and he suddenly wondered, with a flash of shock, why that was. The thought made him frown as he took a left into the monster boyfriend's neighbourhood. Why was RC on his mind so much recently? What the _hell _was going on lately? The sensation he had caught like a virus the moment he heard about this jacked up job in Hughes' bullpit came back to him - an uneasy foreboding that made his guts knot up. Something was seriously wrong with all this. They weren't used to dropping the ball like this, either. They were ridiculously unprepared. Carl shifted his shoulders in a subconscious effort to shake it off. Hell, if West was right, then there was no cycle here. No predictable scale of the moon to be ready by, not even the predictability of a shape shifter's deliberate transformation. At least that had motive behind it to anticipate, sometimes provoke, to set a trap. This? RC's Hulk comparison was actually the most accurate way he could think it through. If it was indeed something related to the animalistic base nature of man, which, poetically enough, would explain the eventuality of the monster he had seen, then the trigger could be anything that whispered up the centuries of evolution from the lizard brain. Anger, sex, protecting offspring. How were they supposed to anticipate something like that? Wait and watch indefinitely until something pissed this guy off? What _had _been responsible for the changes? he thought back to the East side. The woman who orchestrated all this - she was, as far as he knew, in the same position as they were. How was she to know when he would change … unless she was deliberately provoking it? And if she was, why? Carl scratched at his jaw, idly noting his need for a shave. If it was a case of base instinct gone wild, then maybe there was some degree of control involved, if the impulse was being deliberately fed. Like guys who got frustrated into virtual insanity if they went more than three weeks without getting laid. Once that was out of their systems, they calmed down for a while. Little wonder West had followed that logic, he thought nastily. Maybe the woman had come to the same conclusion. That if he was allowed the opportunity to change, to feed the beast he literally was, then the rest of his life would be free of it. Drain the poison, and it took a while for it to build back up. If so … maybe a trap was the answer here. He disliked posing as police for the simple reason that he and RC already had such close ties to the local PD, and the chances of wires crossing were too high, but he would concede if pushed. Maybe if they kept the watch a bit more obviously, preventing the woman from leading him to his kills, they could confront and pressure the guy into transformation. For some reason that escaped him, he still felt underhanded about such an approach, just as he had about killing this clueless guy in his human form. Supernatural entrapment. It didn't seem right.

He pulled the truck to the kerb and cast his eyes up to the third floor as he shunted the stick shift into park. He leaned back into the sun-cracked vinyl with a sigh for the muted darkness. The sluggish orange dusk, all they ever got in LA, still lingered over the western skyline. Darkness had not yet fallen - whatever happened, it wasn't getting by Carl.

Carl stretched out his arms awkwardly, listening to the joints crack. It was 10:34, and he was bored. He had no flash of insight to make the vigil worthwhile, and he was growing tired of waiting. _Well, _demanded a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like RC. _Got a better idea? _No, he answered it internally, and that was the problem. Unless they found a way to crank up the pressure and force the boyfriend to explode - which was risky in its unpredictability to begin with - this could go on forever. Who knew when he would crack?

Carl cracked his neck and glanced away from the two young men who passed by the truck in dark hoodies, back toward the boyfriend's building - just as the lobby door flung open. Carl's senses immediately sharpened as he recognized the man from the East side, moving at a quick pace down the sidewalk. He wore only a collared shirt and jeans, though the weather more than called for a jacket. A moment later, the woman followed, running to catch at his arm. The man stopped abruptly to throw off her hold roughly, and she stepped back instinctually. He turned and walked away from her, everything in his movements screaming anger and frustration. A heartbeat, and she ran after him again, this time placing herself in front of him to halt his headlong march away from her. Her pale hands came out to brace against his chest, an attempt to slow him down, which in part at least was effective. Carl twisted slightly in his seat to watch as the boyfriend stopped, gesturing angrily with both hands. Carl couldn't make out the words, but the timbre of his voice was strained and aggressive. She replied, hers plaintive and edged with fear. Not _of_ him, Carl knew. Maybe forcing a break wasn't going to be necessary after all.

The man again shook her off, but she was determined - or desperate. She stood on the pavement behind him, her pale pink skirt caught by the streetlight, her hands stretched out from the elbow before her. Her words slipped by Carl, but the pleading tone had the sharpened edge of desperation to it now. He responded, turning to yell at her. Again, he marched away, and for a moment Carl stared at the woman, attempting to anticipate her response, watching the gears in her head turn. She glanced back at the apartment building, hesitated, and ran after the boyfriend.

Carl gunned the engine and dug through his pockets until his fingers butted up against his cellphone. RC was on speed dial - he wasn't even looking at the display. The truck's rough engine guttered along missing beats as Carl slowly followed the still-arguing couple at a discrete distance.

"What?" Snapped RC's voice on the line.

"Get your arse in the Lincoln and get out here."

"What happened?" All impatience and annoyance had instantly snapped out of RC's voice - he was all business now, and distractedly Carl wondered what it was in his own voice that instantly convinced the younger man not to even think about screwing around. Nice to know, to use at will.

"Id gone wild could be triggered by stress, and right now, I'm watching the couple marching down Central avenue having a domestic."

Carl could almost hear the whir as RC's quick mind assessing the validity of this information, and what it meant.

"You're thinking unscheduled detonation of the gamma bomb?" RC caught Carl's drift.

"Yeah, and I don't want to be chasing this thing down through central like a Chaplin comedy. Ironically enough, if this guy's going to blow, we got to contain this."

"I'll be there asap."

"I'm just passing -"

"Save it, you'll be gone from there before you finish that sentence, and traffic in central makes the times impossible to predict. I'll track the GPS in your phone. Call me if the shit hits the fan."

Carl's cell abruptly flashed _call ended _and he tossed it into the passenger's seat, his eyes again on the couple.

Carl's uneasiness was only growing as the boyfriend continued his march down the weakly lit sidewalk, the small woman both struggling to keep pace with him and curb his obvious anger. A beat, and he rounded on her explosively just as they reached the dark mouth of a narrow alley, fists bunched, his voice cresting in a sharp yell - and sweat tingled under Carl's collar as his temperature shot up, his central nervous system gunning his fight or flight response. The sound was no sooner out of his mouth before the boyfriend jerked forward sharply as if he'd taken a punch, instinctively propping his hands on his knees. _Ah hell, _Carl thought, as he watched the woman take a swift glance into the darkness of the little alley. She was obviously backed into a corner. They were both undeniably sure that this wasn't a heart attack. With three parts foreboding and one part fascination, Carl watched as the little woman took her companion's arm, and casting a swift look around her, hustled him into the darkness.

"Shit," growled Carl to no one but himself, and heaved himself out of the truck, tucking his jacket over the grip of the old revolver. He spared the avenue a glance either way, before he made the dash across the street to hedge by the corner of the building bordering the alley. Cautiously, his right shoulder lightly braced against the brick, Carl chanced a look into the alley. The darkness blinded his eyes, especially in contrast to the orange hue of the street light, and he blinked experimentally, hoping fervently that nothing lunged out of the darkness to bite his face off. _I am way too pretty to have my face ripped off by a monster. _RC's earlier words whispered through his head, and absurdly, Carl's lips ticked up in a tight smile. Where the hell was RC? Guy should have been breaking every road rule and speed limit in LA. If this was what he thought it was, then there was no time to wait for him. Drawing the revolver, he slipped into the dark.


	6. Chapter 6 : Predator hunting predator

Carl's eyes adjusted slowly - it was surprisingly dark in the little crevice in the city, but there was just enough light to go by. He flexed his hands around the 58, absently noting the sharp feel of the metal against the little finger on his left hand, which had been badly broken several years before and bent ever since. The dark corridor before him smelled of piss and trash, a fire escape zig-zagging upwards to his left, the bright spot of a shuttered window high on the wall on his right providing the only source of illumination. A line of plastic bins stood further into the dark on the left, and it was there Carl's attention snagged, considering cover and ambush. Nothing moved. He licked his lips, moving carefully deeper into the dimness. This was stupid - he wasn't twenty anymore, and he hadn't hunted solo in more years than he wanted to contemplate. He swiped the back of one hand at his forehead, registering the sweat with a groan of self-disgust. Bad idea.

The faint scent of water, like groundwater after rain, reached Carl. It was faint and mixed with something else that sent his mind startlingly spinning back to his childhood, running through wet grass with his father's dog - an animal smell. Carl edged into the darkness, careful with his feet in the scattered refuse, and his eyes snagged on movement. Two figures were crouched in the darkness near the other end of the alley, so far apparently unaware of Carl. A pimped up SUV crawling with halogen headlights rolled by leaking R&B, the sharp cold light catching on the tender paleness of pink fabric fanned out against the black bitumen - the woman. Carl flexed his fingers around the revolver and crept forward, keeping to the shadows.

She was kneeling, crouched forward facing the wall, and _something _was similarly crouched facing her, huddled with its rounded back against the wall. Translucent grey skin glowed weirdly in the dimness, and Carl recognized the rounded power of the monster's shoulders. In so short a time, the boyfriend had shifted. To her credit given extraneous circumstances, the woman was running damage control effectively still - for now. Carl had plans to change that. For all his existential contemplations about entrapment and hunting monsters in human shapes, Carl found none of those conflicting feelings in his head now, as the monster crawled forward, long powerful arms and black claws silhouetted weakly against the pale lights of the streetlights ahead. This was a monster. It eviscerated people. He was going to kill it.

The woman stood and moved to the far mouth of the alley, checking her coast was clear. What she intended to do, Carl assumed, was exactly what she had been doing since this all began - manage the situation. So he had shifted out of sync with her schedule - she would salvage what she could of her present circumstances. And that likely meant finding him an easy victim, sating the beast as quickly and quietly as she could. Carl distractedly wondered what lie she was going to tell him this time - if he remembered their argument and his beeline for a bar, she could incorporate that partial truth into a convincing lie, and tell him he had been pissed off and wasted, and she had got him in a taxi and taken him home. Had to hand it to her managerial skills.

Carl stayed himself - it was RC's style to go in guns blazing before taking stock, not his. Stupid risks were a young gunslinger's game. Carl's position wasn't optimal, and he had no idea what she was going to do, how she would respond to the situation. If his transformation were partly emotionally based, maybe she could ease him down? He hung back and watched. If she proceeded along his own conjecture, and someone was going to die tonight to satiate the beast, then he had no qualms about taking it down. He did however have a healthy sense of self-preservation - as much as a hunter could, anyway - thus he planned to await the right moment to strike. He grinned at the darkness, despite himself. He was a predator, hunting a predator.

Carl watched the woman step back from the mouth of the alley to stare in apparent consideration at the monster at her feet. A young African American couple passed by in the street beyond, the streetlights slithering across the surface of their PVC jackets and bouncing off their gold jewellery, and Carl's heart hit his throat. The monster was _right there, _not ten feet away, lurking in the darkness, and yet the young couple talked and laughed loudly, pushing one another playfully, completely unaware. Carl blinked. Hell if that wasn't a classic hunter's perspective. He forgot, sometimes, that there were people out there who worried about muggings and robberies and rapes, and knew nothing of the things in the shadows. The woman tilted her face toward the street, chewing on a fingernail. She moved to crouch in front of the monster, gaining the focus of its shark-like eyes. Unbelievably, she was talking to it, her voice a soft cadence. Completely nonplussed, Carl watched as she gave something that sounded like an instruction from the pattern of the words he could not quite catch, and disappeared around the corner into the street, leaving the monster a dark mass against the wall. Carl could feel his eyebrows rising up his head. What the hell was this? A gamble, certainly, leaving that thing there, unattended. If the exchange was anything to go by, then the monster must have retained some ability to understand her.

Though he greatly wanted to know what she was doing, his focus was on the monster itself. As far as he knew, she wasn't likely to tear anyone apart if left unchecked and at large in the city, but the monster well may, despite whatever order she had given it. Carl cast his eyes to the black mass that crouched unmoving against the far wall. He could shoot it to death and burn the body before the woman even returned. He doubted the LAFD would have much to extinguish. But caution held him back - he was alone, knew the monster was physically strong, and exposed in a highly populated area. Besides, he was less than willing to risk his life on West's intel. The man was a decent hunter, he couldn't deny that for all his personal dislike, but there was the yahoo factor. If West was right, and the transformation was based in part emotionally relating to base instinct as it seemed to be, then his attack here and now ran the risk of simply pissing the thing off, motivating it into a rampage through the streets. And if West was wrong about the standard ammunition, shooting it was likely to do no more than that.

He cursed, again the unfamiliar feeling of uncertainty creeping up his back. He hadn't felt this useless on a hunt in years.

Ten minutes later, Carl still crouched in the shadows, waiting. Waiting for the tide to turn, awaiting the woman's return. Her move would motivate and inform his. He felt a mixture of tension and ridiculousness crouched in the alley on his haunches, his right shoulder braced against an overflowing industrial bin, revolver held between his knees. The monster, surprisingly, had not moved, though there had been a few close calls when it raised its hideous head as people passed in the street beyond. So far, that had been his only concern.

Sweat had dried beneath his collar, itching at his neck and middle of his back, but he remained still and silent. He did not have to wait much longer.

Voices caused both hunter and monster to raise their heads, as the woman in the pink skirt stumbled into the alley, followed closely by a man in a slightly dishevelled business suit, his tie hanging loosely from his neck.

"You want to do it here?" he asked, equal parts surprise, amusement and inebriation. She responded by pushing him flush against the wall opposite the monster in the dark, stepped back and slowly unbuttoned the neck of her shirt.

Carl's heart rate quickened - he hated being right. He licked his lips, his grip on the old 58 suddenly slick, and bounced on the balls of his feet lightly, readying himself to spring when he was sure the monster would do the same.

"You want me, right?" she asked.

"Hell yeah," he agreed enthusiastically, before a note of concern entered his voice. "It's just, out in the open here …"

"Now," she said, as her unsuspecting prey gestured in confusion and Carl stood up, swinging the revolver up as the shadow of the monster bunched in the darkness like a pouncing cat, and sprung -

Before Carl could compute his best angle of attack, the sound of a gunshot splintered into the small space, startling everyone and everything involved. The woman whirled, seeking the source, and Carl admitted he was following suit. The guy in the suit had stumbled sideways, probably in instinctual retreat when he saw the monster coming for him from the shadows, but overbalanced and fell, giving an incoherent yelp of fear and shock.

The monster shied from the shot, either the noise alone or a bullet had struck flesh, and twisted its head toward the far mouth of the alley - where the silhouette of a man approached, arms up and outstretched, obviously training the gun on the thing.

The monster snarled, its attention diverted from the man on the ground to stick on the intruder - attack would certainly trigger an animal response. It crawled toward him, hissing low, circling, searching for but one weakness to exploit.

Carl swung himself from behind the skiff, aimed as best he could in the low light, and fired two rounds. They impacted - of that he was certain from the meaty thud of projectile meeting dense muscle, coupled with the outraged roar of the creature as it sound out this new attack.

The man mirroring him at the other end of the alley had moved further into the darkness, hiding his exact position from Carl, but the muted glow from the overhead window caught the bright muzzle of the gun. A moment later, two rounds rang out, and again, the monster howled and staggered sideways, crashing heavily into the row of bins with a clamour that rang off the brick walls, making Carl's eardrums bounce in self-defence. The woman was screaming in denial and distress, but so far, had done little more to interfere than that. The monster clawed to its feet, crouched, as Carl fired again and missed, the shot pinging dully off the brick.

With a fresh howl of rage, the monster threw itself at the wall - to Carl's surprise, disappearing into it with the softer crack of splintering wood.

Carl jogged to the spot to peer into the dark hole that had swallowed his prey, angrily shaking her off when the woman latched onto his arm and pulled, screaming at him to stop.

Carl's eyes shifted to look over her head as the man on the other side similarly jogged further into the alley to meet them. That shithead grin was unmistakable.

"Damnit, RC! I could have shot you!"

"No you couldn't," the younger man quipped, humour in his voice, and Carl actually felt a stab of shock even deeper than that of his partner's arrival. RC was going to give him shit? Now, of all times? Carl stared at him incredulously, vaguely aware that he held the woman by her upper arm, and she was attempting, entirely uselessly, to beat him off. The soft form of her twisted and thrashed in his grip, gaining his attention only when she went for the cheap shot, and he arched away. He jerked her roughly to grasp the other arm, his fingers evidently biting into flesh when she gave an involuntary hiss of pain.

"Stop it!" He ordered her, as RC bent to check on the guy in the suit, who, amazingly, was still slouched against the wall, gaping in shock.

"You hurt?" he heard RC enquire as he concentrated on keeping the feral little woman in his grip from landing anything significant on him. "Then get out of here! Go on, get!"

His partner came back into Carl's line of sight behind the woman in his grip, gazing down into the darkness after the monster.

"Basement cellar door," he said. "Hell, we're going to have to go after it before it finds a way out. What we going to do with her?"

That, Carl thought, was the sixty-four-thousand dollar question, one he had already considered - what to do with the girl, while they were busy murdering her boyfriend? _No, _a voice in Carl's head corrected him, _not murdering the man. Putting down the monster._

Carl looked down, caught the woman's eyes in the weak light, and locked his stare.

"I'm sorry," he said, and worse, he meant it.

The next instant, he bough the grip of the revolver down hard into her temple, and she flopped suddenly boneless in his arms.

RC looked up at him and grinned, but not before Carl had caught the unmasked flash of shock that briefly snapped across his features.

"Always such a gentleman," he said sardonically a heartbeat later, composure recalled, as he helped Carl lay the unconscious woman out in the darkness on the other side of the alley.

"Gonna tie her up?"

"Overkill," Carl replied, popping the chamber to squint at the telling black circles of the empty slots, resisting the ridiculous urge to spin the chamber like he did as a boy.

"How many rounds you got left?"

"Twelve in this clip, got a spare. You?"

"Three."

RC grimaced. "Into the breach, then."

Carl distractedly reflected that RC could sound like a smartass even when lazily quoting Shakespeare, and followed him to the dark abyss of the hidden basement entrance.

"A bit of warning would have been nice, how the hell did you know where I was?"

"I microchipped you when you were wasted at last year's Christmas party with the fuzz," RC replied without pause. "I saw your play and stepped up to the plate - trapping it between us was the only shot at keeping this thing, and us, off the six o'clock news. I didn't think ringing your cell was going to do you any favours hiding in the dark with a monster. You want to hug this out some more, or should we really be killing the evil supernatural beast now?"

Carl clenched his teeth at the method of delivery, but he got the point. The younger man dipped his head to better gauge the distance, reached into his jacket for the tiny flashlight normal people kept to find the keyhole in the dark. The narrow beam caught on a service ramp heading down.

RC flashed Carl an infuriating _See, piece of cake _grin before he ducked the lintel and disappeared into the gloom. Carl followed him closely, senses sharpening anew.

The narrow beam of RC's flashlight bounced around a long, low room, barred windows leading up to the street at the far corner, admitting again a muted light from the streetlights beyond. Carl's heart rate spiked a moment at that, until his brain registered that the bars were intact. Something the size and force of the monster would have had to break its way out, leaving shattered glass and twisted iron in its wake. Which meant it was still inside. RC unsurprisingly appeared to have come to the same conclusion, beginning a more methodical sweep with the flashlight from right to left and back to right, crossed under his grip on the Beretta. Carl kept a habitual two steps behind him, body angled out, covering his back. The light's beam snagged on the tail end of movement, something melting into the shadows hair-raisingly revealed, and before RC could jerk the light back to the retreating shape, the monster lunged out of the darkness with a roar, contacting solidly with RC at central body mass. Man and monster went down hard, and Carl spun reflexively to the right, rounding on the spot most likely where RC and the monster had hit. The creepy grey translucence of the monster's powerful back greeted him along with RC's cry of pain, and Carl fired, hoping to a God he hadn't believed in since his Daddy died that the monster's bulk would be enough to stop the bullet taking RC two-for-one if he happened to be in range. The flashlight had dropped, rolling away to provide only a slim corridor of light and subsequent reflection to make out vague shapes. It was that, or potentially let his partner be ripped open by a monster in his moment of hesitation, and that was not something Carl was hardwired to do. Despite the adrenaline flooding his system, Carl aimed careful - he only had three shots in the 58, and reloading quick-rounds was laughable in this darkness. His only other option would be to find RC's Beretta, but the only reason it would be out of his partner's grip was if RC was incapable of holding it, and he would not go there.

The bullet found its mark - the monster gave the unmistakable yelp of an animal in pain. The shadow crossed the beam of the dropped flashlight, and Carl cursed. He picked up the little flashlight, bouncing it wildly around the room. Funny, that RC seemed on the surface to be the loose, crazy, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants component of their partnership while Carl was generally the steady baseground - until under stress. Then, the situation weirdly reversed. RC under stress was sharp and methodical and logical - Carl was a mess of wild flukes, gut feelings and instinctual reactions. The light caught its dead eyes just as the monster made its attack from the gloom in a rapid crawl, and Carl fired, skittering the monster back into the darkness. Carl stumbled back, wiping a hand across his face - blood. Not his. Now he was getting somewhere.

All around him, the basement was silent and still. Carl dragged in a breath and bought the light up once again. He checked the corners - it was animal instinct after all, and a wounded animal sought comfort and retreat, even if it effectively trapped itself strategically. Nothing. Carl bought the beam around in a sweeping arc of the basement floor - nothing. And then a sick thought occurred to him, and he spun, watching as the shadow of the monster sluggishly rose to block out the light of the door. It was wounded - and in retreat. If it reached the basement door, it would likely be lost, their tedious waiting game of a hunt starting all over again. Weirdly, it was that thought that propelled Carl into explosive action. He ran for the basement door just as the monster's bulk crawled up the ramp to freedom, blotting out all light, and fired his two remaining rounds into the dark mass. There was a grunt - and the shadow fell, washing Carl in the weak light of the small alley and the neighbouring streets beyond. Carl ran like a man half his age for the door to the cellar, pelting up the ramp in a graceless display of slipping an crawling, to burst out into the alley, catching himself against the rough wooden frame of the basement door. The 58 was still in his hand - but empty, and Carl swallowed, his throat dry, his eyes raking the dim space for the monster.

The pitiful wail of a wounded animal arrested his attention, and his eyes swung in a moment of panic to the spot he knew he and RC had laid the woman. Accomplice or not, she was human, and to some degree, he could even understand her reasons for acting as she did. If that thing … Carl edged forwards, the revolver still in hand from habit, and caught sight of the dark shape of the monster approaching the fan of the woman's skirt bright against the darkness and the soiled bitumen. It was moving slowly, awkwardly, dragging much of the lower portion of its body, to slump motionless at her side. Carl approached warily, every nerve he had on end. The woman was as they had left her, unconscious, laid out on her back with one arm bent over her abdomen, her face tilted toward the light. The monster had crept to her side, face-down, aligning its body with hers in a mirror image. It was not moving - but it was still breathing. His breath catching against his chest in a gasped sound Carl didn't want to devote much thought to, he tucked the spent revolver into his belt and edged toward the line of bins - where he easily found a broken-off bottle, a casualty from the monster's earlier assault. Grasping it in slick fingers, Carl returned to the unlikely pair of the pretty, small young woman - she could have been sleeping if not for the blood his blow had spilled curling around her ear - and the hideous bulk of the monster her that had once been the man she loved, seeking comfort even as it knew, as Carl did, that it was over.

He hit his knees hard beside them, awakening the flicker of the monster's fathomless eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said, and for the second time that evening, he meant it.

Before he could question his actions, Carl drove the broken mouth of the bottle hard into the monster's neck, into the tender place where a human carotid artery would have been, bizarrely hoping in his head that its base anatomy remained the same, while heaviness and regret simultaneously settled over his heart. He was at least partially rewarded when blood gushed immediately over his hand, the bottle, the alley floor, and the monster gave a final small cry of pain, and was still.


	7. Chapter 7 : Going sideways

It was over. Carl dragged in a breath and lurched to his feet, his eyes closing briefly before he registered something new, now that the immediate adrenaline of the fight was draining away. There was no quip or curse at his shoulder, no answering bullets, no lanky frame ducking in and out of the light in the rough and tumble of the kill. No RC.

Panic slammed Carl, his mind replaying the first few minutes after they had entered the cellar, the monster's brutal bulk bodily slamming RC head on, his own moment of hesitation for fear of firing on his friend. Then nothing.

He stumbled back to the door, wondering where the hell the flashlight was, before the narrow beam answered him, discarded on the floor of the basement. Carl thundered gracelessly down the ramp to snatch it up, angling the light toward the spot where he guessed RC had impacted the monster - there, the dark shape of a man. Carl skidded to his knees for the second time, but now, it was RC's inert form that provided his focus. He angled the light up to RC's face instinctually - the small beam meeting eyes wide with panic in a face white as milk. Carl angled the light down - saw the blood that covered RC from neck to hips, saw the slashed denim jacket. His friend's chest was rising and falling rapidly in panic, his hands clenched into bloody fists against his ribs.

"Carl …"

It was so unusual to actually hear his own name from RC that the word alone would have been enough to send Carl reeling, but it was something else, too - there was panic and pain, as one would expect of physical injury worthy of that much blood loss, but awfully interwoven was sorrow, pleading, and in some capacity, apology. It was a reluctant and regretful goodbye, wordlessly encompassing all the things that, for whatever justification, had never been said. It was the look of a dying man - and worse. Carl's body broke out in the hot-cold of shock, his heart clenching painfully, as looking up at him from the basement floor was RC - the _real _RC, all his bullshit stripped away. The man behind the mask was suddenly there in the darkness with him, placing nothing between them. This was RC, his friend, his partner, hell his next door neighbour, the man he had spent almost every day of the past ten years with. This was the guy that had looked out at him from behind RC's smart mouth and cocky attitude, the guy Carl had often caught a glimpse of and wondered, before RC would slam his walls back up, grin crookedly and offer some wisecrack or sarcasm. The real man who had been underneath RC's affectations all along, a man that for some reason, had created a character of himself to present to the world, and somewhere along the line, had forgotten how not to be.

"Oh no, no no, hey come on now, you're getting out of this," Carl coached mindlessly, his hands ghosting to touch on RC in nothing more helpful than instinct. He was a hunter - darkness and blood were his natural habitat. He forced himself into the vicinity of a grip.

"RC? Listen. The monster's down, okay? We're done. We're getting out of here."

RC's body was ceaselessly and convulsively spasming in response to pain and shock, tremors running through the flesh beneath Carl's hands like water. The instincts of a man's physical body, attempting to shift, move away from the source of the pain and protect itself, much the same reaction as gooseflesh fighting against losing heat. His friend's breath caught and stuttered unevenly, punctuated by soft grunts and chokes, gasps of pain - but he was breathing. Carl braced himself and drew a breath heavy with the metallic sting of his friend's blood now covering his hands - he didn't want to do it, and knew he had no choice. He peeled the slick, heavy material of RC's blood-soaked shirt away from his body, and found both what he feared, and what he needed to know. It was the monster's method of attack - all the victims had been eviscerated, slashed deeply through the body cavity. RC had been at the mercy of those claws mere moments, but under the stinging eye of the little flashlight, Carl could make out two scratches, one from RC's right collar bone to the bottom of his ribcage - bleeding heavily but not too severe - to a second reaching from his friend's sternum stretching to his left hip - and even through the blood pooling in the hollow beneath his ribs and inside his hips, Carl could see things one was certainly not meant to see when looking at the outside of a living man. He kept himself from cursing with difficulty, instead focusing on his friend's ashen face, ripping off his jacket and bundling it into a ball.

"RC? We've got blood loss. You know what comes next."

Carl grasped the blood-slicked fists and coaxed RC's hands open. Even close to clinical shock, some recognition still fired through RC's synapses, and he complied under Carl's direction.

"Bite down," the older man suggested, and before he had time to hesitate, he rolled his jacket into RC's hands and pressed down hard against the open gash. RC gave a harsh yell of pain, his boots kicking blindly against the basement floor, his body naturally seeking escape. Closing his eyes, Carl stayed where he was until he was reasonably sure RC wasn't going to lessen the pressure the moment he let go, and looked up into his friend's face.

"Keep the pressure down. We're getting you out of here, hear me?"

His mind spinning, Carl forced himself to leave RC where he lay, and sprinted back to the alley. They didn't have much time, not with those injuries, not with that much blood lost. Certainly no time to wait for an ambulance - RC would either bleed out or die from shock before they arrived. And there was clean-up to be done. Usually, perhaps due to their day job, they were meticulous on that score, but this time, Carl didn't have the luxury. He pelted down the alley half-blindly, his eyes on the street-lit sidewalk beyond, scattering rubbish from the toppled bins, and risked his life in a straight sprint across the road. He crashed painfully into the side of the truck, but barely registered the pain. In the back were supplies - he rummaged for the slim container of lighter fluid - the lighter strapped to it - and dodged two cars heading back, his mind resolutely on the task, on what to do next, to carefully keep it from tumbling into the dangerous abyss that it edged. He had a bad feeling about this from the start, he'd known something was going to go horrifically wrong, and not allowing RC to call in other hunters on the job may well have cost his friend his life.

Carl ran back down the alley, hefted the still unresponsive woman into his arms, and laid her against the wall at the mouth of the alley. Ordinarily, they would have taken care of her, too. Taken her home, or to a hospital. But this was no ordinary hunt, and moving her a safe distance away from the body of the monster before he lit it up was the best he could do under the circumstances. Besides, he reasoned, if anyone reported the fire, the LAFD would have to access the alley, and were likely to find her. It would have to do. He ran to the basement door, dousing the monster's inert body liberally in the fluid, before ducking back into the darkness.

The little flashlight illuminated only a thin corridor of RC's body - eerily, his bloody torso - as Carl again crashed to his knees beside the fallen hunter.

"RC? Hey."

His friend's eyes were clenched closed, but opened at Carl's voice.

"Time to go, okay? Come on."

He picked up the flashlight, lifting RC's arm across his shoulder, angling his arm under his friend's neck. RC was lanky sure, but he was a grown man, tall and deceptively heavy, and Carl didn't have the strength to carry him bodily, as he had the woman. He was not going to enjoy this.

"Keep the pressure on, okay? Brace yourself, this is going to hurt, I'm sorry."

Carl eased his arm as carefully as he could behind RC's shoulders, drawing his friend's arm across his shoulders to grasp his blood-slicked wrist, braced his feet, and pulled RC's weight up off the floor. At his friend's jagged scream Carl thought for a horrible instant that he was going to be sick, though luckily he kept it down, his jaw clenched. Instinct worked in his favour, as RC reflexively clamped Carl's bundled jacket against his gut, Carl trying very hard not to consider that it was likely the only thing keeping RC's insides insides.

RC was panting at his side, shudders running through his body against Carl, though whether he was shaking due to the pain, crying or slipping toward shock, Carl couldn't tell. Not that it really mattered, he thought as they stumbled toward the pale rectangle of the basement door, RC's feet tripping and dragging across the concrete, likely leaving a snake's trail of blood behind them. It all added up to the same thing. His friend was hunched over his middle and curled in toward Carl, his body complying as much as possible with him out of instinctual animal autopilot. Ironic, that very same base drive had been the predilection of the monster he had just killed. The ramp almost drove Carl to his knees, the only thing keeping him up was the knowledge of how much hitting the ground right now would hurt RC. He tightened his arm around his friend's waist, putting RC's habitual belt to good use for a change, hooking his fingers around it. No one had come poking their noses in yet, which surprised a distracted Carl. Maybe no one reported multiple gunshots in LA anymore. Whatever the reason, his strained luck was holding, and Carl let go of RC's wrist only long enough to flick the lighter to life and drop it on the monster's corpse. Flames licked up instantly, helpfully providing some light at least to save stumbling and jarring RC, and Carl made it to the mouth of the alley.

Now the hard part. If no one had reported the gunshots, they _were _likely to call the cops on two guys staggering around covered in this much blood. If cops turned up, things could get very complicated very quickly. Carl was under no illusion that he could patch this kind of wound up himself to avoid questions at a hospital, but if some of the local uniforms turned up, recognized them from the clean-up crews and associated them with the previous murders and the body of the supernatural creature burning in the alley, Carl couldn't for the life of him imagine how he would talk his way out of any of it. No, he thought as he craned his neck around the brickwork of the building to check the coast was clear. If he took RC to the hospital without the interference of the cops and their knowledge of the murders, he could site a mugging, some asshole with a knife collecting wallets. By the time Jacobson or Hughes or any of them found out (if at all) RC would be sewn and bandaged, the similarity of his injuries to the victims' obscured. As far as deniability was concerned, it was still salvageable.

Carl licked his lips, hefting RC closer, flexing his hand around the blood-slicked belt. Sweat was running into his eyes and soaking the back of his shirt, and he was shaking almost as hard as RC, whether from panic or simple muscle fatigue he couldn't have guessed and didn't care. If he could just get the younger man to the truck, his inner monologue babbled frantically in his head, then he'd be okay, they'd get to the hospital and RC would be taken into surgery and he'd be okay, they'd be okay. He just had to focus, just get him to the truck, get him to the hospital as fast as humanly possible. Flashes of the alternative intruded into Carl's thoughts, and it was not something he could abide. A flash of RC laid out on a gurney, his face grey and still, a flash of his blood draining out of his body to soak into the truck's cracked upholstery, until there was nothing left in his body. No. It couldn't happen. Carl wasn't going to let that happen.

"Okay, here we go, last leg, we're almost there just hang on, okay?"

Carl wasn't entirely sure if RC could even hear him, but he attempted to sound confident and reassuring for his own sake as much as his partner. With a painful breath, Carl stepped out of the shadows and into the street, now almost dragging RC with him. He staggered to the road, gauged the distance of the oncoming car, gave a fractured plea to whatever may have been listening that they made it through this alive, and ploughed across the street.

The man in the car took a sharp double-take as the beetle slid by them, and Carl prayed he didn't stop. The truck, it was right there. He crashed up against it for the second time that night as two guys on the sidewalk beyond caught sight of Carl.

He wrenched the door open, dropped RC as gently as he was able into the passenger's seat, his heart hitting his throat when RC didn't scream in pain, not so much as opened his eyes.

"Hey," a male voice from his right hailed, and Carl knew exactly who his target was. He had to move. "Hey, what're you doing?"

Carl awkwardly folded all of RC's lanky limbs into the truck and slammed the passenger's door just as the two guys breasted the tray.

"What're you doing?" enquired the same voice as Carl dodged the nose of the truck and headed for the driver's side. He spared the heavyset twenty-something Hispanic guy a glance, gauging his likelihood to be a threat, but didn't answer or stop moving.

"Holy shit, is that blood? What the fuck, man? Hey!"

Carl wrenched the door open and slid in, casting a frantic glance at an unresponsive RC as he gunned the engine. He pulled out without a glance for the traffic, earning him a sharp horn blow from behind, his mind running over the quickest way to the nearest hospital - County General was likely, and Carl focused his attention on getting them to that destination alive and nothing else. At his side, RC was silent and still - _passed out, not dead, NOT dead _Carl's mind insisted - his hand having fallen away from applying pressure to the bloody ball of Carl's jacket, his blood soaking into the seat.

As the haphazard white shapes of the hospital turned to meet his line of sight, Carl floored the accelerator, cutting off a guy in an SUV who swore something unheard at him.

After what seemed a frustrating age of negotiating tight spaces, Carl pulled up in the ambulance bay. A guy leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette waved him off, as Carl tumbled out the door.

"You can't park here, you gotta go around -"

The guy stopped as he caught sight of Carl's blood-soaked clothing, the bloodied doors of the truck, as Carl wrenched the passenger's side door open to reveal RC.

"Help!" He barked.

The wide-eyed guy flicked the cigarette and ran back inside, Carl on his heels.

Within minutes they had alerted what felt like the entire ER, trauma staff pouring over the truck like water over rock. Carl found himself pushed out of the picture, as a gurney was rolled out, RC lifted onto it, almost immediately painting the white sheeting in blood. Carl was a hunter, he'd had his share of ER calls, but still, the tribe-like language of medical staff and what their flurried actions indicated continued to slide past him. All he knew was that they had made it, he'd got RC to the hospital and the trauma staff were obviously interested in keeping him alive. He'd be okay. It'd be okay.

The medics unsurprisingly shot the gurney toward the OR, their words and all fine details slipping by Carl, who followed out of a lack of anything more sensible to do, beginning to feel slightly dazed.

"Sir?"

He looked down to find a red-haired woman, her hands around his arms, looking up at him as though it was not the first time she had asked.

"Sir were you injured?"

Carl shook at least a measure of reality back into his head.

"No, no it's - it's not my blood," he replied, his voice a scratch.

The woman nodded, whether in acknowledgement or encouragement he wasn't sure.

Her grey eyes were kind, and she wore the less than appealing blue-patterned uniform of a nurse.

"You should be checked out anyway, sometimes people get injured and don't even realize if someone else was worse off."

Carl shook his head again, looking around the ER. People in blue scrubs milled around the space, two doctors in white coats, tired relatives slouched in chairs along the wall, another nurse with a clipboard recording information. The details were bleeding back into him - signs papering the walls on infection control, an occupational health and safety procedure, instructions on information for the triage nurse, reminders about having your insurance details ready, a no-smoking sign above the door.

Carl looked back down at the woman in front of him, who was attempting to guide him toward an exam room. He noted the pencil stabbed through the auburn knot of her hair like a Chinese ornament, the brown mole above her lip, the featureless white sneakers on her small feet.

"No I'm fine, really, it was my friend injured, not me." His voice was stronger, and other sounds were reaching out to him - the chatter of people, the hum of traffic when the automatic doors opened, the sound of rubber soled shoes squeaking against linoleum, the wail of a siren somewhere outside, a toddler in the hall leading out into the hospital screaming. Carl looked down at himself. He suddenly did not want to be covered in far too much of RC's blood.

"Though I think I better clean up. Do you have anything I could change into?"

"Of course," the nurse replied warmly, apparently glad Carl was engaged and responding. He knew enough about shock to realize his checked-out behaviour was likely causing her to consider admitting him as a precaution.

"I'll get you some scrubs, there's a bathroom just down the hall."


	8. Chapter 8 : Aftermath

Three hours later, Carl was still sitting in the waiting room, his back cramping from the angle of the plastic seats. He knew he should probably be tired, but couldn't seem to manage genuine tiredness, only a stale fatigue.

The nurse had handed him a pair of pale blue scrubs and directed him to a bathroom down the hall. The night was wearing thin, and beyond the ER, the hospital was relatively quiet. Carl slid into the cold bathroom, casting his eyes around habitually to mark how many people were around him, the level of possible threat they posed, where the exits were, what spaces he couldn't see. The tiled bathroom was empty but for himself, however, and he directed his attention to the line of shower stalls against the far wall. He checked his eyes to the right, and moved toward the line of sinks, backed by steel-edged mirrors. His hands were covered in blood - it rubbed off against the steel faucet as he turned on the water, swirled against the white porcelain sink as he washed it from his skin. He looked up - his reflection looking back at him. The left side of his face was blushed in blood from RC's wrist, the right side of his neck dark with it from his friend's shoulder bracing against it. His jacket was likely in a biological hazards waste disposal, and his green shirt was dark with dried blood, his jeans splattered. He was going to have to shower after all, it wasn't a quick one in the sink kind of clean-up. Nevertheless, Carl pulled in a breath and washed his face and hands.

His own state was beginning to catch up with him, and gathering momentum. His skin itched with dried sweat and pulled with dried blood, he must have rolled his ankle by the off-centre feel of it, the muscles of his back and shoulders were still burning from bearing RC's weight, and the skin of his right hand had been rubbed raw on his friend's belt. His arms felt leaden with muscle fatigue he hadn't even registered causing, and his chest ached for reasons he couldn't even identify. He'd been hot in motion, but his muscles were starting to ache now he had stopped. And his head was pounding.

RC … God, RC. Carl's hands slowed. He'd seen RC hurt plenty of times, seen him knocked out cold more than a few, seen him stumbling around concussed and talking nonsense. He'd seen RC bleed. He'd had worries about blood loss for his friend before, one notable occasion being when RC had got himself caught and drained by a nest of vampires. But this - this wasn't any of that. There had been a few hair-raising times when fear shot through him, not knowing if RC was alive, but this had been the first real time he could remember when he feared he might actually lose RC. God, when he had arrived at the hospital he hadn't even felt for a pulse, hadn't even checked RC was still alive. Probably because he didn't think he could take a negative answer right then. RC had almost died. End of story, no more chances, final as a coffin six feet under dead. Right from the beginning of this skewed hunt, RC had been on his mind, and in hindsight, the uneasy foreboding he had felt ever since he had first got the details from Hughes related to RC himself. He'd known something was going to go sideways, but he'd ignored it. Dismissed the idea of calling in other hunters on the job, yahoos or not. And God, looking down at RC's bloody torso in the harsh beam of the little flashlight, seeing literally what his friend was made of, slick and dark solids in the blood. RC's face white against the blood that coated his throat, looking up at Carl with pupils blown in pain and fear.

Carl …

Carl clenched his eyes shut. _God damn it, RC, _he thought as the image of his friend's starkly pale face in the torchlight came back to him. RC unmasked. For once in his life he'd stopped pretending, dropped the act, stopped covering himself, stopped broadcasting the ever-present Channel RC bullshit that sometimes, could make Carl want to kill him. For once he had dropped the defensiveness and let Carl _see _him, and for a moment, was who he was without pretences. Carl already knew the reason why - he had seen it in the regret, pleading and apology in his friend's face. RC had known he was done for. Known he would never have the chance to offer Carl anything but the mask he wore. He had looked up at the frightened face of a friend he cared for more than anything, knowing that Carl would only ever remember what he had wanted to be seen, the character he had created, and after ten years, would never know him.

He had known he was dying.

Carl ducked his head, clenched both sides of the cold sink, and for the first time in long years, he cried.

Carl shifted in the plastic chair of the emergency waiting room, attempting to ease off the cramp in his back. He felt hollowed out. A grey sort of nothingness had settled over him. He supposed he should be doing something - but he couldn't imagine what. He had no word on RC - which, he told himself, was a good thing. If RC was dead there'd be something to tell him. He had made it clear he would wait and wanted to be informed the moment anything happened. He had all the insurance details, and was the closest thing to family that RC had. That much at least he knew to be true - Carl had stumbled into hunting through and because of RC. Carl had always been a solitary man, but not due to any supernatural reason. The same couldn't have been said for RC, who had had everything in his life taken via supernatural forces nine years ago. Carl had vaguely wondered in the past if RC was the way he was because of that loss - had he ever known RC minus the bullshit factor then, when they were younger before it had all happened? Somehow, he doubted it. He hadn't known RC very long or very well by then. RC had been pushed into hunting not long after, and Carl had felt it only right he follow. Carl had always felt that he should keep an eye on RC, that he should have someone there with him at least, even if it wasn't the people he would have preferred. It seemed horribly ironic for RC go out the same way. But they were hunters now, whatever circumstances had landed them both in the life. And that was how hunters always went. The likelihood of dying in your sleep from a stroke or being hit by a drunk driver seemed significantly less when you spent your time seeking out things that wanted to kill and eat you. Carl just wasn't ready for this. He sincerely doubted he'd ever be ready to lose RC, and somehow, he didn't believe RC would feel any different in his place.

"Mr. Bates?"

Some hunter he was, he hadn't even heard the theatre nurse stop right in front of him.

"Yes?"

The nurse nodded, no doubt making sure he had the right man.

"Your friend is out of surgery, being moved up to ICU."

ICU. That meant he was likely to survive, in Carl's book.

"Is he likely to live?"

The nurse nodded. "He flatlined, but they resuscitated him okay. It was a close one, and he'll have to stay in ICU for a while probably to monitor him for infection and internal bleeding, but yes, his chances of surviving look good."

Carl sucked in a deep breath and swallowed hard, literally and figuratively. He wasn't going to start all that again.

"Can I go see him?" he asked. For now, he needed to verify RC was alive.

"Sure. He'll be unconscious at least a few hours though."

Carl nodded. "Thanks."

The nurse smiled and nodded, before he turned and disappeared again through the doors to the theatre section. Carl shook himself and headed for a sign - hospitals were always labyrinthine and County General was no exception. He had asked two orderlies and a nurse before he found the correct section of the ICU, and even longer before he found RC, but find his friend he did. RC still looked God-awful - he was white, had at least a dozen leads and tubes in him (some of which, Carl thought with a stab of unsteady humour, RC was unlikely to enjoy) and he looked … weirdly average. He was clean, dressed in one of the trademark unflattering hospital gowns, his pale hair tousled against the pillow. He was unconscious as promised, lying still and small against the bed. But he looked relatively safe, and as peaceful as could be expected given the circumstances. A heart monitor ticked beside him, and Carl stared at it a moment, watching with fatigued fascination this visual verification of RC's continued survival. Carl shook his head - he must be tired. He dragged a chair from the far corner over to the bed and sat gratefully, reaching up to pat RC's arm gently with a strange sense of shyness. He chuckled tiredly at himself. They passed the point of shyness years and countless less-than-perfect hunts (not to mention parties of the same calibre) ago. He hadn't felt embarrassed when a chupacabra had literally bitten him in the ass, and RC was stitching miraculously without comment - which may have been due less to compassion and more to the fact he was laughing too hard. For his part, RC certainly hadn't seemed the least bit chagrined the morning after Carl's step-sister's wedding reception, during which he had got rotten drunk and proceeded to critique his new wife's sexual appeal to the groom, then throw up on the events manager when she attempted to intervene.

Carl suspected it was a mixture of the gesture being one of genuine affection, that made him awkward at the best of times, coupled with his own fatigue in every possible way, and the very close call they had both just had with RC's life.

Whatever the reason, he found himself smiling as he sat back in the chair, his eyes resting on the unconscious form of his friend.


	9. Chapter 9 : Our people

Four days later, RC was still in hospital, but out of immediate danger.

Carl hadn't meant to fall asleep in an ICU in a chair like a worried mother, but had woken several hours later to find RC watching him. Adrenaline and surprise had shot through Carl, who gave a guilty start and sat up, clearing his throat. He half expected a grin and a smart remark about being caught sitting by his bedside, a return to normal and a subliminal communication that the slip Carl had witnessed never happened. He wasn't sure how he would feel about that eventuality if such was the case, but was spared consideration when he got neither. He wasn't sure if it was the drugs at first - morphine didn't exactly inspire normal, rational behaviour, but he was to learn during the next three days that it wasn't. RC had simply stared at him a moment, and Carl stared back, at a loss for anything to say, before RC smiled at him slowly, and closed his eyes. Carl had gaped at his friend a moment, before realizing he had been sleeping in an ICU, hastily washed and dressed in nurse's scrubs. He judged it well past the point where he aught to get grip, so he had left RC to more sleep and pain medication while he returned home to shower and sleep properly.

He had changed into decent clothing and checked the answering machine before returning to the hospital. West had called again, to inform RC he had sent his research on the checkpoint guy along if the similarity was of any help on their hunt. Despite his general dislike of West, Carl had called him back to thank him, and let him know RC had been torn up but was going to be okay. West's obvious concern and promise to swing by LA in the next week or two to check in went a long way to changing Carl's opinion of him.

Four days later, and the pair were exploring West's research, RC still confined to his bed for the meantime. Between them, things had both stayed the same, and changed irreversibly. RC could have swept his honesty under the rug and more than likely, Carl would not have pushed. He had always allowed RC his bullshit in the past, believing the younger man thought it necessary. RC was still RC - he still had that sardonic sense of humour, the same crooked grin, that same cockiness, but it was more the staples that his more flamboyant persona had been built on. Those things were a part of the man he really was - he had just exaggerated them out of all proportion in the past, to keep the world, including Carl, at a distance. The world was still at arm's length - Carl wasn't. He knew without question when the next time RC had woken with the ability to think reasonably, the first thing he had said was "thankyou. For saving my life. I mean it." It was more serious straight-forward honesty than Carl had probably ever got from his friend, and all he had done was nod, honouring that. Since then, they were easing into a new dynamic.

As for the other side of the hunt, the fire had been reported, but no mention of a supernatural beast had splashed across the front page of the Los Angeles Times, so it had been put down to arson, someone lighting rubbish bins on fire again. Of the woman, they never had contact with again. Carl had wriggled in place. It was messy. He couldn't deny it.

RC flicked through West's notes, stopping every so often when something snagged his attention in regard to their own strange hunt, Carl sitting in the chair beside the bed with RC's laptop, looking for any possible physiological contributions to the whole bizarre transformation. The monster was down, the hunt was over, people had stopped turning up around LA eviscerated, but there were still many questions left unanswered, and if it had happened likely twice now if West's checkpoint man had been of the same persuasion, then it was more than likely to happen somewhere, to someone else, again. Both hunters were keen to be more prepared next time.

Carl twisted to dig his buzzing cell phone out of his pocket, answering the call as a nurse came to check RC's temperature, blood pressure, dressings and similar for at least the fifth time, casting Carl and his cellphone a glare. RC complied - it was the quickest way to get rid of her.

He took West's folder back up and looked over at Carl when the nurse filled his chart and moved on.

Carl was staring hard at RC's blanket, his eyes abstracted, cellphone curled in one fist.

"What?" RC questioned.

"That was Bobby," Carl replied, a distant, empty quality to his voice. "Winchester's dead."

RC frowned in thought.

"Winchester … ain't he that blow weed from Texas?"

"Guy like that isn't really from anywhere in particular," Carl answered, still with that careful, considering tone to his voice. "But yeah, we worked a job with him a few years back through Texas and then Arkinsol."

RC's expression cleared into surprise when he recalled John Winchester, a big, dark man who had not trusted either he nor Carl, despite the fact they worked that hunt together. They had regarded him as both an excellent hunter, and a bit of a prick.

"What happened to him?" He asked.

"Singer said a demon got him, like as much," Carl returned. "Guy had been hunting some demon for twenty years, and in the end it got him instead."

"We all got it coming," R.C quoted Turner's familiar phrase, directing his attention back to West's intel and off Winchester.

"Yeah. Guess so," Carl said faintly, but there was that something in his tone again which tickled at R.C's inattention. Some sense of distracted pensiveness that coloured his voice and turned his eyes vacant, gazing inward.

"What now?"

Carl licked his lips and slowly rolled his eyes up to settle on RC, something indefinable bleeding into his expression.

"I been thinking … thinking maybe we should get out of here. Head out somewhere where they hunt things other than monsters. Montana way, maybe."

RC's expression slid into shock, as if he would have been less surprised if Carl suggested they quit hunting, settle in the suburbs of New Jersey with a mortgage and a white picket fence and sell tyres at a retail outlet for a living.

"Are you serious?" Was all he eventually said.

"Yeah, I think I am," Carl replied. He had been sitting back with one leg cocked ankle to knee to prop up the laptop, but he closed the lid and set both feet on the floor to level RC with his eyes.

"This city, its wearing down on me these days. Never used to. All we ever do here is damage control, man. Burying evidence, trying to keep everything under wraps, keep Hughes and Jacobson and the others from suspecting us as anything but quiet, normal clean-up guys. I'm sick of the bullshit."

It faintly amused Carl to register RC's shocked expression at the phrase. RC habitually swore like a sailor (though Carl was yet unclear on how much of that had been deliberate affectation) but he seldom did. The topic merited it, though, in the spirit of newfound honesty. He _was _sick of the bullshit. RC's new honesty with him had only made it more obvious how much the constant hiding, lying, sneaking around and covering for themselves was wearing him down. They needed something more simple, in his book. They were hunters and he wasn't naïve enough to believe there could ever be absolutely no cloak-and-dagger in their line of work, but he was beginning to understand why very few hunters tried to maintain a normal civilian life. The double quality of it was exhausting. Ironically enough, it was easier to be outside the fringe, not part of settled society for a hunter than it was to try to coexist within it. All the hunters they knew were on the road in one way or another.

"Why Montana?" RC asked, a flat, direct quality in his voice to match the levelling look in his eyes, demanding nothing less than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Carl shrugged, again revisited by that unfamiliar sense of shyness.

"I don't know, Singer's up that way in South Dakota, and old Harvelle's wife, she's still up there in Nebraska. I heard she runs some kind of bar, has a lot of contacts come through. Even West bounces back to his army friend's widow in Minnesota a couple of times a year. People we don't have to lie to and cover for, is all."

RC was regarding him with an uncharacteristic frown - part consideration, of both Carl and his words, part something that looked equal in pity, affection and sadness. Where once Carl would have got a sarcastic quip designed to shut down the merest possibility of a serious in depth conversation, instead RC tilted his face down to regard Carl through the tops of his eyes and smile a softer version of his usual challenging grin.

"Our people," he said.

Carl felt himself flush deeply - an obvious tell that had exposed him relentlessly and much to his embarrassment all through his adolescence, that he had long since conquered and controlled as an adult. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and dropped his chin to his chest, horrified. Through burning ears he heard RC's low chuckle, but it held none of his customary meanness.

Again, where once the younger hunter would have heckled Carl mercilessly for being a sentimental old fool, RC spared him a moment without deliberately finding sport in embarrassing him any further.

"I get it," he said eventually, when Carl had more control of himself. "Just tell me one thing - tell me this is only about the tribe, and not having to cover your ass all the time."

Carl swivelled his head at the door, the floor, anywhere but at RC for a moment. RC watched him, understandably fascinated that his customarily understated friend had suddenly started behaving like a nervous pre-adolescent boy.

"You almost died," Carl admitted eventually, the three words sounding like they were ground out of him.

RC cast him an expression of mixed sadness, affection and frustration. Whether it was the light that slanted in through the window at the end of the room to highlight half the hunter's face and set his shaggy pale hair glowing like phosphorescence, or perhaps simply the weight that existed behind RC's mask, Carl could not have said for sure. Whatever the reason, the expression made RC suddenly look older than Carl. Dispensing with the pretences had if anything, ironically enough, only made RC _more_ complicated. Carl shifted his gaze back to the floor. His friend's voice was low and conciliatory when he spoke, as if speaking to a spooked child, and Carl felt a confused momentary flash of hatred for him.

"Carl. I've been hurt before. Hell, so have you. Its part of the gig. You know that."

Carl shook his head, flicking his eyes back up to RC's face.

"Not like this. It was too close this time, man. We're not young gunslingers like West anymore, we cant afford to take risks and pretend there's no consequences."

"Speak for yourself," RC replied with a half smile, but his voice was soft.

"I'm serious."

RC nodded, looking down at West's file in his lap without seeing it.

"And Bobby's call didn't help, I'm guessin'."

Damn the man for knowing him so well, Carl thought. It was true that the thoughts bad been bouncing around his head for a while, but RC's injury followed so closely by both speaking to Bobby Singer again and hearing of Winchester's death - a bit of a prick, maybe, but one of their own nonetheless - had compounded those thoughts, pushing the feelings from background to foreground. Death was always waiting on down the road for a hunter, but being so close to it in two different ways in one week rattled Carl into unfamiliar territory. The need to tighten ranks. To keep their connections closer to hand, before they were all dead and it was too late. It was stupid and sentimental - RC's previous taunts in allusion to his nature had been correct on that score at least, but he couldn't help himself. Nor, if he was honest, would he really want to. If he was soft-hearted, it beat the alternative, and he had seen enough men of that persuasion in this life. Hunters who were as cold as the creatures they killed. This life had a way of hardening a man insidiously, so he lost the ability to see it happening in himself. Hunters like that didn't even fit into his yahoo category - men like that were dangerous, to themselves and everything around them. Carl heard his own voice before he even thought about talking.

"Winchester - I think he had family, somewhere. Man like he was, they probably never even saw him again before he died. It's not right."

RC was silent beside him, and Carl refused to look up.

"Okay," he said eventually, drawing Carl's surprised gaze.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, okay. We'll do it. Montana it is." He smiled sardonically at Carl. "So, inform the tribe. Tell Singer we're heading up his way, if he needs us or visa versa, he'll know where we'll be."

The end.


End file.
